


Chronicles of a Parisian Dumbass

by volti



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Miraculous, Bisexual Luka Couffaine, Endgame Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, F/M, Luka Couffaine Loves Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Social Media, Twitter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-18 03:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 28,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21720856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: Luka's become a frequent patron of the Tom and Sabine bakery and patisserie in downtown Paris—mostly as a pick-me-up for his sister, who's trudging through her first year of university. He doesn't mind it much; he's got money set aside from his main job, and he'd do just about anything for Juleka, and they make a mean napoleon besides.It's just that when summer hits, Tom and Sabine have a new girl at the register.And she's really, really cute.And he can't stop tweeting about it.
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 328
Kudos: 954





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> listen man, sometimes you just gotta write the content that makes your heart happy.
> 
> (i promise i haven't abandoned la joconde! there are two parts left, along with any intermissions i may wanna throw in, but it's all planned out and ready to be written when i get to it <3)
> 
> in any case, i hope you'll enjoy this little thing, whatever it turns out to be. this fic is my sandbox and i'm gonna have a damn good time playing in it.

_at T &S for mom and sister and oh god there’s a cute girl i’ve never seen at the register_

Post.

_i think she’s got flour on her nose, and she probably doesn’t even know it’s there, and she’s adorable_

Post.

_send help_

Post.

That’s the magical thing about social media, isn’t it. The cool, casual, even bored expression you sport in a waiting room or on the subway is a master at hiding away every all-caps rant you swipe out with your thumb. At keeping every moment you want to scream, excited or outraged, under lock and key in your chest while your fingers do all the talking. At cementing the lines in your brow and your lips while you broadcast how much you’re Gay And Dyingggg—and yes, you really need the capitalization and those extra letters for the _emphasis_ —over the image of a kitten falling asleep mid-meal. The viral-video echo of a child’s singing in a big-box store. The pretty girl in the coffee shop with the floral cloth headband, the nude lip, the grey eyes that stop you in your tracks and somehow always seem to meet yours whenever you Just So Happen to look up.

It’s those capital letters, you know. They really do wonders for emphasis. _Emphasis._

In a city like Paris, the hundreds of thousands of people you could pass in a single day would never know the intimacies they could stumble upon by happenstance. The ones you choose to share with a few hundred strangers, friends across oceans or friends of friends who happened upon you or lovers of art the way you love art, because the distance and the screens make it safer.

In Paris, almost no one knows who Luka really is, aside from a blue-haired busker downtown who sometimes frequents coffee shop stages. Or some guy who delivers their evening meals when they don’t feel like cooking. No one has to know. And he’s been fine with that for as long as he’s had these accounts.

He wouldn’t call himself a stranger to the internet. He hardly could; he’s a product of it, raised by it, like most anyone else his age. Frankly, he could go so far as to call it his third best friend—third, because his sister and his mother might fight him for not putting them first, and because he values them enough to put them there. But on the metro, he’s near invisible, and online, he’s Sort Of Someone. A set of hands and a guitar and strings of notes to pull in a few hundred admirers, and even fewer friends he’s never met in person. He doesn’t have to, he’s decided, for them to mean something.

And he’s getting the keen sense that they’re all already hanging onto his last three tweets. Or will be, if they’re not already awake yet. (He’ll never understand that—his body almost never lets him sleep in past eight, no matter how late he goes to bed.)

He has to gather himself before he goes in—which is hilarious, because he must have been to Tom and Sabine’s bakery at least a hundred times by now. Or at least, enough times that they know him by name and to save him a napoleon or two whenever he’s in the area. Is it really that difficult this time because of a girl?

And then she… whoever she is, she _smiles_ at a customer, and it looks like utter sunshine, and almost instantly he wishes she were smiling at him. Just for a few seconds.

Yep. It really is that difficult.

With a flip of his stomach and one last post— _all right, prayer circle before i place this order_ —Luka pushes into the tiny bakery just as the customer is coming out. He shuffles among the racks and display cases as though he’s in a museum, and given the care that goes into these decorations, he might as well be. Usually it’s Mrs. Cheng who’s at the register, humming along to some classical piece they’re playing overhead—it fits her, being so traditional—and there’s a stack of finished cake or pastry orders beside her on the counter. The orders are still there this time, but the music sounds younger; it must be one of those study playlists he sometimes finds online or touches upon when he needs some extra inspiration for his own music.

And there is the girl, with her chin in her hand and the flour _still_ on her nose, absently twirling her pencil as she stares down at a sketchbook like she’s about to get into a fight with it. She doesn’t look bored there. Actually, Luka isn’t sure he’s ever seen anyone so focused before, because even the bell over the door signaling his entrance apparently hasn’t gotten through to her. If anything, she looks like she’s toeing that impossibly thin line between mellow and frustrated, if the quirk in her lips or the pinch in her brow is anything to go by. Even from a distance, he can tell that her face is soft, that her lashes are beautifully long, and that she probably barely has to do anything with them. If it weren’t so weird, or showy, or even creepy, he’d probably stop in his tracks at the door and watch. Try to make up a song about her, for her, on the spot.

Luka takes a deep breath, readjusts his gig bag on his shoulder, and takes a few quiet steps up to the register, still keeping his distance. It isn’t until he clears his throat that she looks up, and he’d swear that he’s never seen eyes so… so blue, before.

He’s never played a song this color before, and he wants to. Instantly.

Before he can get a closer look at the sketches, one that would have been entirely inadvertent, the girl squeaks and snaps her book shut, immediately apologizing for not noticing him right away. Her fingers twitch a bit, but she smiles cordially in spite of them. There it is. That sunshine, just for him. “Welcome to Tom and Sabine’s. How can I help you?”

Luka wonders if that’s just her Customer Service Voice, or if she always sounds that sweet. Either way, somewhere inside him a cork pops, and warmth floods his insides, just for having heard it. Now that he’s this close, now that he’s really heard her, he’d think she’s only a couple of years younger than him. Nineteen or twenty, maybe. “Hi,” he says, as smooth as he can manage. Maybe it’s her first day; he knows some of the woes of customer service, even if most of his work experience has been in food delivery and not actually processing the orders. Maybe he can ease some of her nerves. “I was wondering if I could get something to go.”

“Oh! Sure thing.” The girl brushes some flyaway dark hair out of her eyes, twirls her pencil again, and taps a few colored squares on the tablet in front of her. “What can I get for you?”

“Let’s see…” He already knows the orders by heart, because in spite of their penchant for chaos and unpredictability, the Couffaines don’t mind anchoring themselves to some things. So much so, in fact, that if it were Mrs. Cheng at the register, she wouldn’t even have to ask. She’d already have the box ready. It’s just that he doesn’t want to overwhelm this girl right off the bat, even if he does have the feeling that she’d look even cuter with a blush. “An opera cake, a pear tart, a _fraisier_ ”—that’s for Rose, because he wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still over when he gets back. He goes slowly, gives the girl the chance to look for each item in the menu on her screen before punching it in, just in case she’s ever had customers who were less kind.

Yes, that’s _definitely_ the only reason why, and it _definitely_ isn’t because he wants to spend more time at the register, and has that liberty to do so since there aren’t any other customers in the shop and since he’s done with work for the day.

“Anything else?” the girl asks, her voice slightly more clipped now that she’s in the rhythm of it. She cocks her head, more at the register, and quirks the edge of her eyebrow. Maybe she’s more seasoned at this than he thought. Or maybe she just sinks into this mood when she sets to work.

He kind of likes it. Like, a lot.

But that would be _incredibly_ weird to say, to her face _or_ about her online, so he holds his tongue. “Yeah, um…” He looks around, narrowing his eyes at some of the display cases. “Has Mr. Dupain made any napoleons today?”

The girl’s eyes light up a bit, which makes him smile. “I’ll check,” she says—chirps, more like—and flits toward the room in the back like a hummingbird.

Oh, no.

She’s _so_ cute. _Too_ cute.

She’s back in seconds, before he has the time to agonize about it any further. “Yup, we have them. How many would you like?”

“Just the one.” Luka’s already fishing out his wallet from his back pocket. He holds his breath, card in hand, pushes it into the chip reader. “Say, is Mrs. Cheng… doing all right?”

The girl blinks a couple of times. Is it really that weird to ask? “Yes…? She’s fine. She’s just traveling—she went home for a bit to see her family. She’ll be back in… three weeks?” She trips on her words a bit, not in the way that she can’t recall, but in the way that she doesn’t want to be too forward in her speech.

Huh. Mrs. Cheng didn’t mention anything about a trip the last time he’d been here… “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen you around here before.”

The girl smiles faintly, tearing away his receipt once it’s printed. “Well. I guess that makes two of us.”

Oh, she’s good. He doesn’t even know what to say to that.

She flits around the tiny bakery, different pairs of tongs in hand as she assembles his order, and Luka finds himself tapping out the melody of the current song against his thigh. “Nice music,” he says to make conversation. “You pick it out?”

“Uh huh.” There’s that clipped tone again. “Sorry, I know it’s kinda basic—”

“It’s cool.” He pauses. “Uh. I mean, the music is cool.”

The girl looks up from one of the display cases. It might be the lighting, or the distortion of the glass, but he thinks she might be blushing. “You… said that already?”

“Right—right.” Luka clears his throat, leans back against the wall with his arms folded, and resolves to keep his mouth shut and his eyes down. He knows he’s blushing; his face is too hot for him not to be. She’s _working_ , he tells himself. He can’t bother her while she’s _working_. Still, he can’t help idly tapping the toe of his shoe, or pressing his fingertips into his arms, to that same rhythm, the same melody. At least that keeps him grounded. He only wishes there were lyrics he could mouth along to to make it easier.

He’s about to dip into his own mind, try to find a song that would do the trick, when he hears his name. “Luka?”

Instantly, his head snaps up. The girl is back at the register, a beige box with a gold sticker in her hands, and she holds it out to him. “Yeah,” he says, doing his best to stroll casually to the front and take it from her. “How’d you know my name?”

The girl looks at him, half-confused, before mutely holding up the receipt. On the bottom, along with the last four digits of his debit card number, is his name in tiny capital letters.

Oh. _Duh._ He heaves a nervous laugh, and on the inside, he’s looking away with wide, mortified eyes. He takes the box from her; the sooner he gets out of here, the sooner he can kick himself. “Thanks. Could you tell Mr. Dupain I said hi?” _And also, could you tell him how dare you for hiring a girl who has no right making my heart stop on her first day working?_

She nods, twirling her pencil one last time, and Luka’s off with a wave and a mutual exchange of, _Thank you, have a nice day!_ And the instant the door closes behind him and he turns the corner, he sets the box aside, slides down to a squat, and rests his face in his hands, eyes wide and trained on the ground.

In Paris, no one knows that Luka Couffaine is even capable of being an anxious, smitten fool.

Once he’s churned out as many anxious, shaky feelings as he can—once he’s replayed her smile and the sound of his name in his head enough times—he pulls out his phone.

_god, i hope she has a nice day. i hope she finds twenty euros on the ground._

Post.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a short one this time around! again, this is kind of a sandbox fic that i toggle to when i'm Really Feeling It, or Really Not Feeling whatever other ideas i've been working on. i'm also trying to get together a bunch of backlog so that i like, actually know where this is going to some degree.
> 
> anyway, enjoy!

_today on Chronicles of a Parisian Dumbass: Cute Bakery Girl knows my name and i forgot to ask for hers._

_AND i forgot to tell her about the flour._

_conclusion: the prayer circle didn’t work, and she probably hates me. more at six_

Well, okay. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Surprisingly, at least to himself, he’s got a good track record when it comes to people liking him on first meeting, At least his mom and Juleka still like him, even if she might be obligated to. And Rose does, and Ivan does, even if Luka is kicking himself for not picking something up for him, for forgetting they even had practice today. Mylène does, too, or seems to well enough; she’s known his sister since their middle school days, and it feels like she’s been dating Ivan for practically forever, so he’d like to think she’s not just coming because her boyfriend’s in a band with him.

So maybe Cute Bakery Girl doesn’t hate him. Maybe she just tolerates him. Or maybe she doesn’t pay him any mind; after all, he’s just a drop in the bucket of every other Parisian picking up an order or praising Tom and Sabine through word-of-mouth. He can’t tell just yet which is better.

Maybe she’s already forgotten him.

At least his last couple of tweets are getting a couple of likes here and there—mostly from mutuals, but better to get some reponse from some people he vaguely knows than no response at all. And more than that, at least she smiled. At him.

He’d do anything to see that smile again, in person instead of in his head.

Well. Almost anything.

“What’s eating you?”

Luka looks up from his phone, snapping out of himself and barely aware of how much he’s been absently scrolling through his feed. There’s Juleka standing in the doorway of their sort-of shared bedroom, her bass guitar slung on and her toes tapping half-impatiently. He’s always found it kind of funny, how open she is with her emotions around him. She’d never do this with their mother, or her classmates. Maybe not even with Rose. “We’re ready to practice,” she says, like he should have known all along that they were expecting him upstairs. “You coming?”

“Yeah—yeah.” Clearing his throat, he shuffles off his bed and pockets his phone, making a careful grab for his own guitar and the box of pastries. “Sorry, I was just… thinking.”

Juleka scoffs, the way any younger sister probably would. “Sounds dangerous.”

Luka rolls his eyes. “Keep talking and I’m gonna eat your tart.”

“You won’t.”

“I’m your brother. It’s in the job description.”

“What were you thinking about?” Juleka asks, brushing her hair from her eyes even though it falls right back into place. It looks like the purple is due for a touch-up; he’ll help her out with it, in spite of their bickering.

“Just this girl,” he mumbles, pushing past her and already heading toward the deck. She doesn’t need to know the details.

He doesn’t have to turn around to know Juleka’s rolling her eyes. “Oh, boy.”

“No,” Luka corrects. “I’ve already dated two of those.”

He doesn’t give her the chance to quip back, mostly because they’ve already made it up on deck. Rose is still working on some vocal warm-ups, Ivan is twirling one of his drumsticks between his fingers and humming to himself, and the cool air of the Seine hits him head-on. (It’s the closest he’s gotten to ocean air; he’s posted a few times about how going to the southern coast would be on his bucket list if it weren’t so damn expensive.) He takes a seat on a nearby stool to tune up, and then he sets his guitar aside, holding up the box from Tom and Sabine. From the girl. “Snacks before or after?”

_Before_ is unanimous, and in Rose’s high-pitched terms, “But we should make it quick! Just because we haven’t performed in a while doesn’t mean we can go slacking!” (She has a point, even if they’re all pretty sure that the sooner they finish practicing, the sooner she and Juleka can get back to cuddling, and giggling, and probably more than cuddling and giggling, downstairs.) 

Luka’s about to tell Ivan about his own forgetfulness and apologize when the box stops him. Or, well, what’s _inside_ the box stops him. It’s all intact, thank goodness—the two little cakes, the tart, even the frosting on his napoleon. But tucked away at the end, nestled in a cupcake wrapper, is an electric blue macaron, sandwiching a deep purple filling and iced with an intricate letter M.

It makes his stomach flip.

“What is it?” Ivan says. “We’ll still eat them if they’re messed up.” He grins. “They taste better that way anyway.”

Luka’s still staring at the macaron, half-guessing at the flavor, half-daydreaming, half-reminding himself not to daydream, and half-remembering that there are only ever two halves. A smile threatens the corner of his mouth, and he does nothing to fight it. “Jules?” he says, placing the napoleon and its wrapping in Ivan’s hands. “Can you go grab us some plates?”

_god, i’m so fucked._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hands up if luka is #relatable

_i think this might be becoming a habit_

_hey siri, when does a habit become a problem?_

_actually i don’t think i wanna know the answer to that._

Luka goes back to Tom and Sabine’s at least two more times within the week, and at least one more time after that. And every single time, the girl with the dark hair and the sketchbook and the blue, blue eyes is at the counter. Tapping that pencil, playing that tasteful music, so focused it’s almost scary. He even tries to space out his visits, just so he won’t look desperate or like he’s coming by just for her. (Even if… admittedly… part of the reason he _does_ come by was in the hopes that she’s there.) He just happens to be, it seems, the victim of dumb good luck.

Or maybe just _dumb_ luck.

To his credit, he carries himself pretty well whenever he talks to her. Keeps their transactions and conversations short and simple, waits for his orders in the relative quiet of the shop—mostly because he’s afraid of making a fool of himself any more than he already has. The second time, she’s already speaking with another customer; her eyes are bright, her smile just as sweet, and even though it isn’t directed at him, a part of him feels so goddamn _blessed_ to hear her say, “Enjoy, _monsieur_! Have a good day!”

And then she gets to him, and her expression mellows out. “Oh, yes,” she says, her nails trailing over the spine of her trusty, mysterious sketchbook. “I remember you. What can I get for you today?”

In the moment, he doesn’t care if she doesn’t remember his name. The fact that she remembers his face is enough to quietly send him over the moon. “Just the napoleon this time,” he says, and then, after the pause when he hands her his card, “So… about that macaron.”

(He’s already kicking himself.)

The girl seems unaffected. “What macaron?”

“The first time I came,” he says. “I didn’t order one, but there was one in my box.”

“Oh, that.” She hands him back his card, along with a receipt to sign. (This time, he notices his name at the bottom.) “It was a special promo we had going. Buy five pastries, get a macaron for free.”

Luka looks up from the receipt, stomach churning, fingers twitching. “I only bought four.”

The girl seems to freeze for a moment, and this time around, the pink on her cheeks is unmistakeable. “Sorry about that, then,” she murmurs. “I guess I was just excited about it.”

It isn’t until after she’s called his name and handed him the little box, after he’s walked out of the shop with the sound of his name still ringing in his ears, that he realizes there was no promo advertised anywhere in the bakery.

It makes him consider leaving the note again.

He’s been thinking about doing it since the first day—when he was waiting for his order and minding his tongue over the music—and he still can’t tell if he regrets not doing it. He’ll be the first to admit he isn’t exactly the best at _speaking_ words, and he’d probably make an even bigger fool of himself if he whipped out his guitar and started playing all the things he felt himself wanting to say in the moment. Like a walking _anyway, here’s “Wonderwall”_ guy in the corner of a house party.

A note, though. That feels like a happy medium. Getting the feelings out without it being too intrusive, or too much of a sentimental tryhard. It seems more and more doable with each time he stops by. And it’s really only a matter of composing the message in his head: _Hi, I’m sorry to bother you, I just wanted you to know that I think you’re pretty—_

Wait, no…

_I wanted you to know that I couldn’t stop watching you that first day—_

Oh, _God,_ no. That actually _is_ creepy.

_Maybe this is a wild guess, but I think your name starts with an M because of the macaron, and there are lots of nice names that starts with the letter M, and whatever yours is, I’m sure it’s pretty—_

Now it’s just getting worse. He’s not even totally sure about the letter M thing. For all he knows, it could stand for “macaron.” The literal thing he ate.

Why is this so much harder than actually talking to her? It’s supposed to be the other way around. It’s always been the other way around, no matter how much it looks like he can get away with it or cover it up.

He knows one thing for sure. He can’t leave his number on the note. Because leaving his number is effectively hitting on her, and he knows better than to hit on someone while they’re working. He heard it in a podcast once: never ask someone out if they don’t have a way to get away. Not to mention the fact that she’s there to do her job, not waste her time on people trying to chat her up and tie up the business line. He knows better. He _knows_ better.

But something in him says that life is too short not to compliment people, genuinely. Life is too short to hold in your heart every nice thing you could say to someone—to lock it away where they’re guaranteed to never hear it. He’s told himself this, even tweeted it with slightly clammy hands right in the middle of refusing to take his own advice.

He figures it out eventually. It only takes days on end, but it comes to him as a flash just before work, the way the right melody tends to do. He scribbles it on a shred of paper from the lyric notebook he shares with Rose and stuffs it in his pocket before he can even give himself the opportunity to reread it or throw it away, and then he’s walking his bike down the gangplank of the _Liberty_ and pedaling away like his life depends on it. Because if he doesn’t do it now, he never will. Because life is too short, and he’d like to get busy actually spending the rest of it.

_Hey there. I don’t mean to intrude on your day or anything, and feel free to toss  
this if it makes you roll your eyes or whatever. I just wanted to tell you that your  
eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue I’ve ever seen. And that you’re incredibly  
pretty. That’s all. I hope you have a good rest of your day, because you deserve it._

_\--Luka_

_P.S. You already know my name. I hope one day I’ll get to know yours.  
P.P.S. If that’s cool._

It’s the best he’s going to get. And it’s everything he can do not to write any more postscripts.

When he gets to Tom and Sabine’s, the shop is—as it has been the last few times he’s come by—empty except for the music and the girl. Except this time, she’s looking at him directly as soon as the bell over the door rings. Like she’s been expecting him. He won’t be so presumptuous about it, but he can’t help hoping that that might be the case. She looks curious at first, but then her expression melts into familiarity, and she closes her sketchbook. “Let me guess,” she says by way of greeting, already tightening up her apron and her high ponytail and tapping at the screen at the register. “A pear tart and a napoleon.”

Well, it’s better than what he thought she might say.

Luka heaves a nervous laugh as he approaches the register, but manages to say, “Just for that, I’m ordering a pain au chocolat.” If anything, he’ll give all the credit to his customer service experience. Knowing the worst of what’s happened to him is sometimes enough to remind him that he can get through a conversation, even with the bumps in the road.

The girl grins, her eyes sparkling. Just the eyes he wrote about. “Oh yeah? Keeping me on my toes, huh?”

“Someone has to,” he says; he pauses to wonder why he even said that, if they’re even friendly enough that he _could_ say something like that. If they could even technically be friends. He gets the sense, though, that the girl can’t tell what he’s thinking, which means he’s doing all right at hiding it. He reaches for his back pocket to cover it up even more, not wanting to think about how much money he’s spent here this week.

It’s when his fingers brush against the crease of the note that his stomach twists, seems to pop open and let every ounce of adrenaline spill into him. He clutches the note, too, before he can overthink giving it away—before he can regret writing it or not handing it over. He focuses on his debit card first, lets the overhead music attempt to calm him as he goes through all the motions of paying. It happens to be from one of his favorite bands—well, technically, it’s one guy with a rotation of musicians, but it’s still a _band_ —and he finds himself tapping his sneakers to the beat, faintly humming along. She really _does_ have good taste…

“Here,” Luka says a little too fast when she slides a paper bag across the counter. He trades it for the note, which is a little wrinkled from being in his pocket but otherwise intact. He holds his breath, meets her eyes, the blue that’s been getting to him these days. “This is for you.” A part of him wants to say, _I promise it’s not my number_ , but even that seems like a downward spiral of bad choices. Justifications that won’t come out quite right.

Luka takes the bag and turns on his heel before he can think to take it back, or before she can say _no thank you_. Because hearing that means insisting in return, and he doesn’t know if he has the constitution to do that when he’s never wanted to push, when it feels like his mind is swimming and his face is burning. He already knows what he’s going to post online as soon as he gets out of here and rounds the corner: _”life’s too short not to tell people you think they’re pretty,” i say, choking up and bolting out of the best bakery in paris._ ” and then, _it’s official, i can never come here again._ He hasn’t decided whether he wants to tack an _lmao_ on the end of that one, or whether that would be too cynical.

But the girl doesn’t say _no thank you_. In fact, she doesn’t say anything at all. There’s only the crinkle of paper as she unfolds the note behind him, which makes him pause at the door. He feigns checking the time on his phone; still half an hour before he needs to report to work. Maybe if he holds out long enough, she might call out to him or something.

But what if she tosses the note after all?

But, God, what if she _doesn’t_?

He can’t bear to turn around.

“Marinette!” a voice calls from the back—it’s Mr. Dupain’s, gruff but hearty and adoring, the way he seems to speak to almost everyone. Luka tries not to jolt too much in surprise. “I need some help with these baguettes!”

There’s another crinkle of paper, another snap of a notebook. “I’m coming,” the girl calls back, and Luka would swear that something about her voice sounds… sweeter. Something from the sparkle of her eyes trickled in.

He smiles to himself, and pushes the door open, and tries in vain to ease the pounding of his heart.

Marinette. What a name. It’s as beautiful as her eyes. He mouths it when he has a moment alone, because saying it out loud feels a little sacred even for someone he’s only really met a few days ago, and maybe partly because if he says it once, he won’t want to stop saying it, and someone’s bound to think he’s off his rocker if they find him like that.

Marinette. Even her name sounded like it belonged to the sea. He wants to say it to the Seine, tell it a secret the way he’s done ever since he was a kid.

Instead, he plays the song from the bakery in his head again, and savors every bite of his bread, and licks the chocolate off his thumb before he dares to pull out his phone.

_okay, fine. life is too short, not to tell people they’re pretty, period._

_so CBG, i don’t know if you needed to hear that or something, but i can’t say i regret telling you._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't left my house in like three days because of this surgery please send hugs and cold drinks and soft foods.

_so i’ve been working on a new song recently. watch this space for a clip._

_i think._

Well, he meant it when he said he wanted to play a song that matched her eyes. Marinette’s eyes. He’s just lucky he can find so much inspiration in color.

It’s just that every time he sits down with his guitar or his music notebook, it feels like no note or chord can do that color justice. It’s been like this since the day the met, after band practice dispersed and he holed himself up in his room with his guitar. It’s not that no music comes to him; no, he can pick up on that easily. He’s been playing people’s hearts by ear for as long as he can remember. It’s just that no matter what he tries to play or scribble down, no matter how much he tries meditating to clear his mind, it doesn’t sound _perfect._ Even if he tries to match the tempo to that spark he saw and the sweetness of her voice, even if he tries to make the music swell for the richness of the color, none of the melodies sound like just that right shade of blue. The unreachable kind.

Maybe that’s the point.

Even if it is, he doesn’t want to stop trying. Her eyes are worth the effort.

In fact, Juleka’s the one who finds him lying flat on his back in bed, still holding his guitar as he stares up at the ceiling, playing out every blue song he knows because even that’s better than trying to make it up in the silence. “Wow,” is all she says. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“What?” he mumbles, half-wanting to say _Sunday?_ instead. “The day I’d have it this bad for a girl?”

“The day you’d actually find music hard,” she says. “But that, too. Usually I’m the one who’s supposed to be this bad.”

Never mind that Juleka and Rose have been dating for years, and practically inseparable for even longer. Luka puts his guitar aside, grabs his pillow, and promptly groans into it.

“You know,” Juleka says; he can feel her looming over him, just like she did when they were both still teenagers and she wanted her turn on their shared handheld console at the asscrack of dawn. “I think you’re the one who needs the pick-me-up this time.”

Under the pillow, Luka rolls his eyes. “I’ve spent enough money there this week, trust me.”

“What’s this?” she teases. “You’re passing up the chance to meet eyes with Cute Bakery Girl?”

God, he forgot she followed him online. Why wasn’t there a way to edit posts so that your sister, who apparently only ever graced _you_ with her snark, couldn’t see them?

When he pulls the pillow away, Juleka is smiling, toying with the ends of her hair. “Get out of here,” she says with a nudge. “You’ll feel better if you walk away from it for a little bit.”

She’s right, but he doesn’t say so out loud. “Is that code for, ‘The sooner you feel better, the sooner you can help me re-dye my hair?’”

Juleka snorts. “It might be.”

The first time he ever went to Tom and Sabine’s… it had to be months ago. Back when he’d found Juleka at her desk, crying and stressing over some exam or assignment and PMS-ing all at once, all during her first year in university… God, it was terrible, seeing her go through that. Not as bad as _actually_ going through it—he’d probably never know what any of that felt like. She’d broken at just the first touch of his hand on her shoulder, broken when he hugged her through it and murmured that it was all going to be okay, and here he was, doing the quickest search he could manage of nearby pastry shops that sold pear tarts. The best ones.

Juleka always did deserve the best; that went without question.

Tom and Sabine’s was the first result to show up. Stellar reviews—nothing below four stars. It was the obvious choice; he didn’t need to look anywhere else. He biked the whole way there, and the instant he walked in and removed his helmet, he was all but walloped with the smell of freshly-baked bread, the classical music wafting through the shop, the display cases of sweets—and then the kind lady at the register, waiting for him to approach. She’d packed the tart with such care and affection as soon as he’d told her who it was for and why, and he felt it. All the she felt for every creation in this space. All the love for every person who had the honor of tasting them.

He didn’t need to go anywhere else after that. They spoke his language, in food instead of music, so they had his patronage on lock.

And now they _extra_ had it on lock—he’d admit it to himself and a few hundred sort-of strangers, at least—because of Marinette. Whose wit isn’t exactly firecracker, but is still warm and quick enough to keep him on his toes. Who seems to know how to hold her own and look like she wants adventure in the great wide somewhere all at once. Who read his note, and smiled, and might not have thrown it away. Who just might have let him in.

Who, of _course_ , is working the register today. (Seriously, he knows the bakery is open every day, but does Mr. Dupain really not give her any days off?)

And who, of _course_ , is watching him with those sparkling, unreachable blue eyes as soon as the door opens. “We really have to stop meeting like this,” she comments, the threat of a smile at the corner of her mouth and a faint lilt in her voice. The kind that tells him she probably watches a lot of sitcoms in her spare time, because you don’t pick up that kind of teasing wit from nowhere. “At this rate, you’re gonna be seeing the dentist as often as you see this place.”

Luka balks a little, but tries not to show it. “I mean,” he says, jerking a thumb behind him, trying to make a joke of it all. “I can go…”

“Don’t.” Marinette says the word like she means to spit it out—like she regrets her own joke, even—then pauses as if to assess herself. “Sorry,” she sighs. “It’s been a long week. What can I get for you today?”

She looks… apologetic. It’s actually kind of sweet. 

“Hey,” he says; it comes out more gently than he meant it to, but it certainly doesn’t seem to do any harm. “Don’t worry about it, really. Can I just get an eclair to go?”

Marinette nods, seemingly unconvinced, and sets to work. It’s while she’s reaching into one of the display cases that Mr. Dupain’s voice comes seeping under the door to the back room. “Marinette! Are you out there?”

“Coming, Papa,” she says without so much as looking up, her voice all too musical as she lays the eclair in the box—

Wait.

_Papa?_

He must be staring, because when she looks up, the first thing she says is, “What are you looking at?”

“You…” Luka clears his throat. “You’re Mr. Dupain’s _daughter?_ ”

Marinette’s brow furrows. She doesn’t look upset, simply confused—as though the answer should have been obvious to him. “Um… yes?” 

“Oh. Well.” He pauses. “Huh.”

What is he _doing_? What the hell kind of reaction is that?

“I mean, I get it,” she says. “I look more like my mom than my dad, but…” She shrugs, smiles faintly. “At least I’ve got his eyes.”

This time, when Luka stares, it’s intentional. Over the music, he’s putting the pieces of her parents together—her father’s eyes, her mother’s hair, all of their joy in the smiles he’s seen. The more he looks, the more she looks like them, and the more he wonders if he’s trying to traces something in him, too. There’s… something in her that looks like she might know him, but he can’t possibly place where.

From the back room, Mr. Dupain—Marinette’s father—calls her again, and she jolts to attention again, makes for the door. Just before she opens it, she gives him one last meaningful look. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” she says, “at your service.”

“At least until Mrs.—until your mom gets back,” Luka says. “Right?”

Something hopeful flickers in her eyes, or maybe _he’s_ just hoping that it’s hopeful, before she disappears behind the door, and Luka strolls on out with her name buzzing behind his teeth. Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Something about it sounds so friendly. Something about it sounds so… familiar.

He’s about five steps around the corner when he realizes, among all the repetition and trying to place just who she inherited those gorgeous eyelashes from, that he left the eclair on the counter.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng isn’t laughing when he comes dragging his feet back into the bakery, but those blue, blue eyes are. “Forgetting something?” she asks, nodding to the lone beige box on the counter.

Luka wonders if his are laughing, too. He hopes they are. He gives a two-fingered salute, and this time, just before he opens the door, she’s the one to call to him.

“Thanks,” she says. “For the note.”

There’s a scream that wants to rip its way out of his chest and explode with excitement and relief, and he channels every bit of it into how tightly he squeezes the doorknob. There’s something else that wants to turn him back to her, to get one last look at those blue, blue eyes, but he doesn’t let himself. If he does, he’ll never leave, and then he’ll never hear the end of it when he gets back home. “Anything to make somebody’s day a little brighter,” he finally says.

Which isn’t entirely wrong. It’s just that instead of _somebody’s_ , he wants to say, _yours_.

(He wanted to get away with it. Saying her name one more time.)

_plot twist of all plot twists: Cute Bakery Girl is Wholesome Bakery Couple’s literal daughter._

_they have an entire daughter._

_and she’s cute as fuck_

_and i’m so dead_

_and p.s., i think she’s been giving me macarons for free._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i couldn't help it ;n; the world needed another update so the world is GETTING ANOTHER UPDATE.

_okay, so maybe i lied about watching this space for a clip. it’s definitely not ready yet_

_but it will be. and when it is, you’re going to love it._

There are flowers on Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s apron, and Luka wonders why he’s never noticed them before. Actually, considering how many times he’s gotten lost in those eyes, and thought about it, it’s probably not so surprising.

It’s not until one of those Just-So-Happenings, when he’s biking between houses for his meal delivery job, that he catches her waiting outside the bakery, her sketchbook open in her arms and her pencil twirling between her fingers. He might be mistaken, or it might be the mid-June sun, but it looks like her eyes light up when they meet his, almost like she wants him to stop. He does—because really, who would he be if he didn’t stop for her?—but he does stay mounted on his bike, as if to tell her he can’t stay very long.

“Slow day?” he says with a polite smile, drumming his fingers on his handlebars. There’s no point in taking off his helmet if he’s not going to stay long, no matter how hot he’s starting to get in this thing. He almost has to wonder how Mr. Dupain can stand being around an oven for so long.

Marinette smiles, and wishful thinking aside, it seems less like a Customer Service thing and more like she’s… genuinely happy to see him. “It’s the usual. Just on a break, and waiting for someone to come by for a custom order.” She tosses a glance behind her, into the shop. “Papa’s been working really hard on it, especially the decorating. He’s kind of a perfectionist when it comes to his craft.” She manages a laugh, and it’s probably the first time since that first day that she actually sounds… nervous? “I guess I know where I get it from.”

Luka’s brow furrows, and his gut turns excitedly, and he’s fighting back a smile that seems to have come from nothing. “What do you mean? Do you bake, too?”

“Well… sort of.” She shrugs. “I’m really only good at making macarons.”

He hopes his eyes aren’t as wide as he thinks they are. Oh, God. She _has_ been putting them in his boxes. No wonder there’s a letter M on all of them. Okay, he tells himself. Play it cool. They’re just—well, they’re not _just_ macarons. He’s seen enough video tutorials on his uncreative days to know that it takes a meticulous baker to get them just right. But they’re pastries. Not a phone number. Not a date. 

He clears his throat. “You don’t say.”

Marinette hums, gives her pencil another twirl, and returns to her sketchbook—except she’s not doing a whole lot of sketching. It’s more like a whole lot of staring. The frustrated kind that always asks art why it’s not doing exactly what we want it to do, every single time we want to do it. 

Luka’s basically married to the feeling; it’s why it’s so easy for him to put aside all the Cute Bakery Girl inhibitions, just for a moment, and ask, “What are you working on?”

She looks up then, stops the pencil with her thumb, and eventually closes her sketchbook with a resigned sigh, holding it close like a child she wants to protect from prying eyes. “Just keeping busy. Don’t want the creative machine to get rusty over the summer, you know?” She taps her temple with the pencil. “I kinda need it for school.”

Something in her expression changes, but it’s hard for Luka to name what it is. It can’t possibly be self-criticism—unless she’s as good at hiding it as he is. “Oh yeah?” he decides to say instead. “Where are you going to school? PCA? École des Beaux-Arts?”

Marinette’s eyes spark, and a smirk tugs at her lips as she leans back against the shop. “New York City.”

Luka blinks. Quite a few times. “Oh. Well. That’s… cool.”

“Yeah, it’s…” She laughs, and it sounds human. Not that over-the-counter giggle that comes with a _can I help you_ or a _have a nice day_ , but the genuine, modest kind. “It’s something. I didn’t think cities got much busier than Paris.”

“It’s big there?”

“ _Huge_ ,” she says, and Luka wishes he could capture that dreamily enthusiastic look in her eyes forever. It already tells him everything she’s seen without words. “Everywhere you go, there’s something. And there’s always someone _yelling_ about something, too.” Another laugh. “You wouldn’t believe how… angry and stressed people are over there. Always acting like there’s only five hours in a day, like they have to get everywhere _yesterday_.”

At that, Luka laughs along with her, and maybe this the first time that he feels something there, some connection to Marinette Dupain-Cheng as a person. And it isn’t because there isn’t a register or a counter or a box between them. “So,” he says after a moment. “What do you study there?”

“Fashion design.” She smiles proudly. “I mean, I worked hard any everything, but I guess it helped to have a couple of good recommendation letters.” She looks down then, tapping her toe on the pavement, squeezing her sketchbook a little tighter and wincing even as she speaks.

_You must’ve worked really hard for the two of them to notice you_ , he wants to say, or even, _I’d love to see your designs sometime if you’ve ever released any._ Instead, all that comes out is, “I play guitar.”

And then he winces. That was the best he could come up with?

Marinette smiles, and her gaze flickers just past him. Right at his guitar. Which is right in front of him. In his basket. “I figured.”

Luka would love to know just how soon the earth can swallow him up. “I mean. I’m also. In a band. Like, a band band.”

Any minute now, he thinks. Any minute the earth wants to do its duty would be _fantastic._

“Mm.” Marinette’s expression doesn’t falter, but she does look down at her sketchbook again. “You and every Vans-wearing, guitar-strumming New Yorker at every street corner trying to score a date or a dollar.”

“I’m not—”

“I know,” she says, and she looks caught in the middle somehow, between the Cute Bakery Girl who wants to keep him on his toes and the sunny sweetheart who… seems to like him. Seems to want to open up to him, wishful thinking aside. Between New York and Paris. “You’re nicer than they are.” 

She pauses to wave at someone just behind him—probably that customer she’s waiting for—then works on tying her hair into a high ponytail and dusting off her apron. He looks at it more closely now: the pretty contrast of baby pink against the black and white of her overall dress, the spray of flowers decorating the corner, the elaborate capital M accompanying it. The same one, he realizes, that decorated the macarons. “Duty calls,” she says with a faint stretch.

“Ditto,” Luka replies, sparing a glance behind him. There’s no delivery box attached to his bike this time, but where he’s going, he won’t need it.

Marinette gives him one last up-and-down as she opens the door to the bakery and it looks like—he _thinks_ it looks like—those blue eyes of hers like what they see. “Maybe I’ll hear one of your rockstar songs sometime,” she tells him, and the melody he thinks he needs starts to fall into place.

He grins, feeling the buzz of each new note in his chest, and raises a hand to salute her with devil horns. “Maybe I’ll get to see a Marinette Dupain-Cheng original in person one day.” It’s the first time he’s said the name to someone who isn’t himself, and it rolls off the tongue like soft water, and the music in his body swells to a forte in seconds.

Her eyes light up. “It’s closer than you think,” she murmurs, the door closing with the tinkle of the bell behind her, and as he stands there, dumbfounded and half-mounted on his bicycle, he’s stuck trying to decide if she meant her apron, her ambitions, or himself. If this is the sass she’s picked up from New York or just from growing older, or if she’s always been like this.

And if—this is the crazy thing—if she’s actually flirting with him.

Either way, the music in him demands to be written _now_ , played _now_. And inspiration, he’s come to learn in all his years of composing, does not like to wait on people for very long.

So he speeds to the Seine before the song can leave him behind, his bike beside him on the riverbank, and he plays with nothing but his ears and his phone to capture every attempt. He plays until the calluses on his fingers protest, until that beautiful blue bleeds into background noise and tells him it will see him again sometime. She will see him again sometime.

When Juleka comes down the river from home, looking for him, she finds him still cradling his guitar, playing and rewinding and replaying every second of this new song from his phone. “You’re ridiculous,” she says with a smile, draping his gig bag over his head and bending down to right his back.

Luka laughs, and even that sounds like music to him. “Maybe,” he says as he resigns himself to zipping up his guitar. “But you’d better get to work.”

“Work?”

He’s still grinning, phone in hand. “We’ve got a new gig to find.”

_it’s starting to be ready_

_CBG, this one’s for you and your cute apron._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a question for you lovely, lovely readers!
> 
> the arc of the story is pretty much outlined, but i'm really really interested in writing a social media AU over on twitter that follows luka, marinette, and other characters after the events of _chronicles_. you could get screenshots of text conversations, social media posts, and so on.
> 
> what do you think? would you want to follow it? let me know in the comments!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we out here writing Way Too Much because we're stuck at home
> 
> also playing Animal Crossing but hey
> 
> also x2, in case it wasn't clearer before—this story is a sliiiiight canon divergence. more on that later :) enjoy the ride.

_maybe i’m coming by too much._

Marinette’s been looking at him funny lately. And he doesn’t think it’s because he keeps ordering all those napoleons. Or because he keeps peeking inside each box to see if she’s left him any more macarons. (He’s even figured out the flavor now. Blueberry. Is that what she thinks of when she thinks of him?)

For a couple of blood-chilling days, he’s afraid that maybe she stumbled across his online accounts—that she’s put two and two together, and that her expression is questioning why he’s even bothering to come back. And that she listened to the clip of the song he posted. Which, he might add, is doing fairly well—something like fifty likes, half the number of reposts, and a few comments to boot.

From the looks of it, people would do anything to be privy to what he’s come to call “wholesome pining.” They’d also dare to say a lot of things they’d probably never do themselves. Honestly, who do they think they are, telling him to give her his number? Not to mention, they’ve _got_ to think of better pickup lines.

But those moments pass when, as she’s slipping out of her apron one afternoon, she snaps her fingers like she’s remembered something. It’s difficult to tell whether she actually wants to remember it; her face is near-unreadable when she turns to him and says his last name out loud: “Couffaine.”

God, he’s ridiculous. He has to quell the butterflies in his stomach. “Yeah?” He tries to make it come out smoothly; he hopes it sounds that way, anyway. The only people who ever called him by his last name were harsh high school teachers who wouldn’t know creativity if it slapped them across the face and introduced itself. Them, and friends of a few years who eventually settled on weirdly endearing nicknames like “Loops” or “Fishbone.” Coming from her, it sounds like… like if she only ever called him that from now on, he’d melt on the spot.

Marinette is tapping her lips in thought, looking through the counter instead of at it. If Luka knows things like lowkey anxiety and self-preservation to the point of suffocation—and by now he’s pretty fucking sure he does—then it almost looks like she knows exactly what she wants to say, again. Has known for a while, again. “I thought I recognized your last name from somewhere, I just couldn’t place it till now.”

Well. That’s not what he expected her to say. His eyes widen just slightly. “What, you saw that blog post or something?” It was a while ago, a cheeky little thing written by some American traveler whose goal was to document buskers all around the world. He’d call it admirable. He’d even call himself flattered. But the post, which was admittedly an exaggeration of the few words they'd exchanged about his original music made it sound like heart songs were something supernatural. Like he was some spectacle or an act at a circus, or like those street corner dollar poets he’d heard so much about. The ones that, apparently, Marinette had come upon on more than one occasion. He wasn’t a gimmick; he just read people differently. And he wasn't about to start capitalizing on it now.

“No, no, it…” Her brow furrows, as though she’s afraid she might be making a mistake. Or maybe just wondering why anyone would bother to write a blog post about him. Even he doesn't understand it sometimes. “Look, I’m sorry if this is a weird thing to ask, but… you don’t happen to have a little sister, do you?”

“Yeah,” Luka says, slightly taken aback. “Juleka. She’s a couple years younger than me. You know her?”

Marinette’s fingers curl against the countertop, and she looks away. Like she’s the one ashamed. Or… or hurt. “Sort of. I think we went to school together for… a while. I think.”

It seems like the sort of thing Luka shouldn’t pry about—at least not with her, because seeing her frown like that twists his gut in the most unpleasant way—so he keeps all his questions to himself. Still, there’s a part of him mentally flipping through all of Juleka’s friends and classmates like recipe cards, trying to place the dark hair, the blue eyes, the _Marinette Dupain-Cheng_.

“How is she?” she asks after a moment, breaking his thoughts. “Is she… doing okay these days?”

“Oh, yeah.” He thinks of his sister, probably sprawled out on the deck or even at Rose’s place, and he smiles to himself. “Just finished her first year of university. She’s staying local, though. I don’t think she wanted to go too far from home, anyway. And besides, it’s just… easier on the three of us.”

“Three?”

“The two of us, and my ma. It’s not too bad. We’re pretty tight. Like a sailor’s knot, she’d probably say.” He pauses after a nervous laugh, mentally kicks himself for rambling. “D’you want me to see if she’ll swing by sometime? Or give her your number or something? Hers is still the same, if you ever had it.”

For the first time, at least to his knowledge, Marinette freezes. Deer in headlights, color briefly draining from her face, the whole nine yards.

“Sorry,” he says, immediately and on instinct.

“No—” She holds up a hand to stop him. “No, you don’t have to be sorry, I just—I don’t know. It’s been a long time, I guess. And we've probably… changed a lot since then. That’s all.” 

Something about the way she says it, the way she curls her fingers against the countertop, makes it sound like it _isn’t_ all. But honestly, what right does he have prying? Maybe it’s a sign to start keeping his distance. To stop coming by as often. He must have overstayed his welcome by now. 

“I’ll think about it,” she finally says, twisting her fingers. If he knew her a little better, if he’d gotten a little closer to her, he’d want to reach over and smooth them out, because it’d be the closest he could get to smoothing out her thoughts.

Luka hesitates, watches the counter with her, absently drums his fingers to the rhythm of the song he’s been working on. Just the first few bars, over and over. He can hear them in her somewhere, coming out of hiding in her heart. They’re a tinny little thing, bells in the background, but they’re _there_ , and they quietly demand his attention. He thinks he’d give it even if he had nothing left to give.

“I can dial it back,” he says—blurts out, more like. “If… seeing me reminds you of her. Or of things you maybe don’t want to remember.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Call it a hidden talent.” He smiles weakly. “One of those rockstar secrets.”

Marinette graces him with a laugh, though it sounds more like a push of air through her nose. “Yeah, well. I dunno how I’d make it through my shifts without my favorite regular.”

The music comes to a halt in Luka’s head, and he hopes to God his eyes aren’t as wide as dinner plates when he looks up. Not that it matters; Marinette’s got her back to him, hanging her apron up on a nearby peg and dusting the flour off the flowers and the monogram. She tries out his name again, whole this time. _Luka Couffaine_. She’s probably read it countless times off the bottom of his receipt, and he’s too much of a fool to forget the first time he ever heard her call to him. But when she says it this time, it feels… It makes him wonder if anyone else could ever treat it with such care. If she’d let him lock it away somewhere inside her because he trusted her to let it out in all the right ways.

Does that sound like something out of some cheesy YA novel he might find hiding in Rose’s backpack? Abso-fuckin-lutely. Whether he actually cares is debatable.

Marinette hums to herself with a little smile of her own and comes around the counter. “Just tell her I say hi,” she says, almost as though she’s trying to convince herself that these are the right words to say. “Hi, and I hope she found her peace.”

“That’s all she wrote, huh.” Luka has no idea what that means, and he’s pretty sure he won’t unless he gets home and asks. He scuffs the mat beneath him with the heel of his sneaker, jams his hands in his pockets. “Yeah,” he says. “You can trust your favorite regular with that.”

One day, he’ll learn how to say something that’s actually witty. Today is definitely not looking to be that day.

At least, as he’s booking it out of the café, he can count on the softness of Marinette’s expression and her words to carry him away with some semblance of grace. That, and the first thought that every anxious little thing he ever felt about going anywhere too much, about that mortal fear of being known, might only be that. A thought. Something that’s allowed to float away. 

Something he’s allowed to start to let go of, if it means someone like Marinette could know him in return.

_so maybe i take back everything i ever said about going somewhere too much_

_in completely unrelated news, CBG said i’m her favorite regular_

_and i hope she finds twenty-FIVE euros on the ground today._


	7. Chapter 7

_because i apparently can’t catch a break_

_getting grilled by my own sister about CBG, AMA._

“So are you ever gonna tell me about this girl you keep thinking about?” Juleka asks him that afternoon while she’s tuning her bass and he’s scrolling his phone. “Or are you just gonna lie there, sighing wistfully and keeping your secrets like some young punk version of Gandalf?”

“Pretty sure Gandalf never sighed wistfully, and bold of you to assume he isn’t punk with that attitude.” Luka cocks his eyebrow at her from his bed, finally deciding to direct his attention away from the ceiling. He has to be careful not to drop his phone on his face, or else he’ll never hear the end of it from her—but then, it’d probably be payback for all the times he named the Kitty Section group chat after the fact that apparently she and Rose can hardly keep their hands off each other. “You don’t even _like Lord of the Rings._ ”

“No, but you’re enough of a meme that I understand the references.”

“If I’m a meme,” Luka says, lazily rolling over onto his stomach, “doesn’t that just make you a meme-loving fuck?”

Juleka doesn’t bother looking up at him until that moment, and then she stares. “Why are you just… _just_ the worst.”

Luka shrugs. “It’s in the job description.”

“You’re changing the subject.” Juleka puts her bass aside. “Bakery Girl.”

“ _Cute_ Bakery Girl,” Luka corrects her, then winces at himself. He just has to keep digging these holes for himself, doesn’t he?

“You’d know better,” Juleka says, getting up to busy herself with the array of nail polish bottles lined up on her vanity. She picks out the near-empty bottle of black, shaking it up and beckoning him closer. “Come on. We’re getting your feelings out.”

Luka grins.

It’s a tradition: Juleka takes out the nail polish, works on Luka’s hands while he tries to talk out whatever is on his mind, and then they switch. They’ve kept it up for years, for as long as Juleka’s been painting her nails—for as long as Luka’s been curious about what his own might look like in an array of colors, and whether they might help him keep his fingers on the tabs. And whether Juleka’s classmates would stop making fun of her and her apparent “creepy goth vibes” if he did it, too. They’ve never been particularly good with words, either of them, but it all seems to come out better once the polish kicks in.

“Okay,” he finally says, once they both get comfortable on the floor and the music is on and Juleka takes his hand in hers. “I mean, I dunno what you want me to say about her. She’s cute, I guess she works at the bakery I’ve been going to, but… I’ve never seen her there before. You remember how I started going in like… March, I think? Cause of your midterms?”

Juleka nods, too focused to give a real answer. It’s endearing, how her brow pinches together like this, how the tip of her tongue sticks out of the corner of her mouth. She’s even clipped and tied her hair up to keep it from getting in her eyes or smudging the polish. She really means business about this, doesn’t she? The last time she was this serious about something was… Rose, probably. The _I think I like girls the way I’m supposed to like boys_ talk. The _I think I like both and I don’t even know if I’m supposed to_ reply.

“So what’s she like?” Juleka asks after a moment. “What does she do?”

“She…” For a moment, Luka pauses. How much _does_ he actually know about Marinette? And how much has he just been projecting onto her like some shallow protagonist from one of those romantic drama movies? He calms himself, chewing his lip and breathing in deep, and thinks about her eyes. Just the right shade of blue. “Well, I guess I…”

Juleka looks up. Expecting. Maybe even judging.

“She likes to draw,” he blurts out. “Fashion type things, because it’s what she goes to school for. That’s what she told me, anyway. I mean… obviously I’ve only ever seen her at the register, because I don’t want to be creepy, even though I’m always afraid I really _am_ creepy and just not picking up on it. But she draws, and she’s sweet… no pun intended. And it’s not like it’s just her Customer Service Persona or whatever, because she’s kind of sassy, too, and… and something about her makes me wanna stay there. And know all the things I don’t know about her.”

Juleka smiles, but she can’t get away with hiding how she rolls her eyes this time. She whistles, starting high and ending low and punctuating it with something that sounds like a fake explosion. “Damn,” she says. “You’ve got it _extra_ bad, huh.”

“Not like I’m gonna do anything about it.” Luka shrugs, trying not to think about how obviously ridiculous he must sound, talking like that. He keeps his hands steady as his sister blows the nails dry and gets started on the next set. “I can’t be That Douche who tries to ask someone out while they’re literally on the clock. And besides, she goes to school a whole ocean away. And she knows big names. _Big_ names.”

“You know big names,” Juleka points out.

This time, it’s Luka’s turn to roll his eyes. “Just because Jagged Stone tweeted me back, like, once in high school, doesn’t mean I know big names.”

“You covered one of his songs. On _acoustic._ That’s a pretty big deal. Almost as big as actually posting it online.”

“It’s—”

Juleka shoots him a look. “Take. The compliment.”

Defeated, Luka sighs and focuses on the music instead, on the way Juleka hums along as she works on those first and second coats with all the care in the world. He starts to hum with her—first the same melody, and then a lower harmony. It’s how they’ve always worked together. Identical, and then in sync, just to find all the ways they’re each other and their own all at once.

Ma always did say it was one of the easiest things about raising them, alone or no.

“Here’s a Novel Idea,” Juleka mumbles, a tease at the edges of her voice. It isn’t hard to pick up on the little nuances in her voice—not hard for him, anyway. “You could ask her out _off_ the clock.”

Luka’s chest goes tight. “Or I could spare myself and _not_ do that.”

“What? Scared of ruining the illusion?”

“ _What_ are you talking about?”

“You know, Cute Bakery Girl this and Cute Bakery Girl that.” She scoffs under her breath. “Do you even know her name?”

His breath catches in the best way. The way he feels proudest. “Marinette,” he murmurs, music and ocean and blueberries on his tongue. Butterflies in his blood and a corkscrew in his stomach. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

Juleka’s hand freezes. Polish drips onto his knuckles, smears across the cracks between his fingers.

His brow furrows. “What?”

“Nothing,” Juleka says, making a grab for a cotton bud and the polish remover. “Nothing.”

But she’s quiet after that, the way she tended to be in school and hardly ever at home. And she doesn’t ask any more questions about Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Or Cute Bakery Girl. Or anything. He has to wait for their hands to dry before he can really function again, and he reaches for his phone well before he goes for the neck of his guitar.

_oh. well._

_hm. more at 11._

_whenever 11 is, i guess._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS......... sorry sorry 😓 i've been working from home, and working on some pieces for zines that i'm in, and finishing up La Joconde. (if you haven't read the updates, please please do! i think you'll like them ;u;)
> 
> but now that most of that stuff is out of the way, i can give more of my attention back to chronicles. and i'm super super excited to do so. so, thanks for giving this a read 💙🎶💖

_boy i sure hope these orders didn’t have one of those “send your cutest delivery boy” requests_

_i mean, on the one hand, i’m flattered and my boss is absolutely right_

_but the things you do for Bread, smh._

It was bound to happen, Luka keeps telling himself as he loads up his bike, and as he straps on his helmet, and as he rides over bridges and through busy streets to get his work done. His stomach’s been turning ever since he checked the delivery tickets, and every anxious feeling’s been flitting under his skin, and it was only a matter of time before he’d have to make a delivery to Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s literal, actual, entire house.

(Well. It didn’t actually have one of those “send your cutest delivery boy” requests. But it did ask for him by name. And he’s barely been able to keep still, with his name in her voice buzzing in his head, ever since.)

The other households don’t do much to ease his mind. At best, the rides and the thirty-second interactions numb him, but only for a short moment. Every time he mounts his bike again and pedals away, he’s reminded that he’s one step closer to her place.

It shouldn’t even get to him as much as it does. He’s been doing this job for ages now, in spite of what little upward mobility there is. It gets the bills paid, and he’s good enough at what he does that the place gives him steady hours, and admittedly, it’s nice to peek into the lives of strangers for all thirty of those seconds. The birthday party he’s accidentally interrupted, where he’s suddenly hailed as a hero because _he’s got pizza_. The post-breakup night in, where a guy he’s never even met sounds like the screeching drag of a bow across a violin bridge. The family who’s too tired to cook because the mother has cancer and the father’s tired of barley soup and pasta and the daughter, who’s still living with her parents in her late twenties because she has to, only just got home from a bit of overtime.

(Most of these are just fancies, of course. He’ll be the first to admit he lets his imagination run away with him sometimes. But he’ll also be the first to say that someone in the world must be living like that. To someone in the world, that has to be real.)

Besides. He’s been to the bakery plenty of times before, knows well enough that the Dupain-Cheng family lives just above it, which is just about as fanciful as he’d expected. He’s spoken to Marinette a handful of times. He’s been on the business end of her witty words, wherever she got them from. Hell, he even gave her the note.

It’s just that… that’s the bakery. Not her house.

He’s never peeked into her story. Never even thought beyond what she’s allowed him to have. And he knows that whatever he sees will be real.

Luka’s mostly running on auto-pilot by the time he makes it to Tom and Sabine’s, and part of him has to wonder if it’s because he’s been at this job for too long, or if he’s been to the bakery too many times for his own good. (Honestly, he’d wager it’s a bit of both.) The bakery is closed for now, so he texts the number on the ticket—maybe Mr. Dupain’s, maybe Marinette’s. 

He’s never texted her before. He doesn’t even have her number. 

Should he ask for her number?

Would she even want his? Or would she feel like the creep because he’s the one on the clock?

Before he can ask himself any more questions, the light to the bakery turns on, and the front door opens, and the tinkling of the bell grabs his attention. And there’s Marinette, in a camisole and heart-patterned sleep shorts and slippers. And there’s black, and there’s a little lace right on the neckline, and—

And he’s staring.

And she’s starting to blush.

He tries his best to cock his brow, and holds up the delivery box. “You rang?” 

_God_ , he wishes that could have come out smoother.

At least Marinette laughs. Even if it might have just been a pity laugh. “Papa,” she says, trading the box and the paper bag for a few bills. “I guess he knew you worked there or something. He, uh… suggested. Very… _very_ firmly. That we order from this place, once he found out we were considering it.”

“We?”

A whistle interrupts them, soft and low and sounding halfway impressed. Luka catches the glint of glasses and a flash of reddish hair as Marinette whips around and hisses, “Would you go up _stairs_? You’re supposed to be picking a movie!”

“Are you kidding? This _is_ the movie!” The redhead, whoever they are, calls out, but the sound of footsteps receding tells him it isn’t long before they’re in the clear again. Just the two of them, caught in an interaction that probably should have already ended. And he’s stuck wondering if she doesn’t want it to end, either—because maybe they’re not quite in the clear, or at least, she isn’t yet. She’s got a whole best friend upstairs, probably waiting to grill her on every little detail.

(Every little detail of _what_? It’s just him…)

Marinette rolls her eyes and shakes her head as she turns back to him. “Sorry. Best friends, right?”

Luka manages a shrug and a weak laugh of his own. He doesn’t much feel like talking about how his best friends are his literal blood and the thing almost constantly strapped to his back. And that most of the people who approximate friendship are on the other side of a screen and will probably never see him in real life, whatever that is. “How long have you known her?”

“Long time. Since she moved here from Martinique. We were basically attached at the hip in like, middle school.” She shifts her weight from foot to foot; to Luka, it doesn’t go unnoticed. “It’s hard for us to meet up anymore—travel journalism, studying abroad, all that stuff. We only really get to FaceTime these days. Other than that… it has its hiccups here and there, but I love her. You know? And sometimes she can be a little, uh… overzealous? In what she does?”

“I heard that!” a voice comes from the stairwell. 

Marinette doesn’t even have to turn and glare for the rest of the footsteps to fall away. “Sorry,” she mumbles again. “You didn’t exactly come here to hear chunks of my life story, did you.”

“I don’t mind your life story,” he says, thumbing through the bills to count them. “With a job like this, I get to carry a little bit of everybody with me, and hearing about your best friend beats the eightieth guy trying to tell me about his divorce and how women are just trying to suck us dry.” Then his brow furrows, in spite of his own sarcasm, and he looks up. “You gave me extra. Like, way extra.”

“Oh, uh…” Marinette laughs nervously. “Yeah, I guess that’s a habit I picked up. Tipping is a thing in the States. People think you’re a jerk if you don’t do it, so my brain sort of… went on autopilot.” She rubs the back of her neck, maybe out of modesty, and Luka can’t tell if it’s because of the amount of money she gave him, or because of the experiences she’s had.

“Well…” He counts out the extra bills. “Here, you should take these back, then—”

“No, no.” She shakes her head, gestures as if to push the money back towards him. “Don’t worry about it. Keep it.”

“As what? A souvenir from New York?”

Marinette grins. It’s slow, and lazy, and it might make his heart thud in his chest at a hundred kilometers an hour, and he’s definitely thinking, _don’t look at the lace, do NOT look at the lace_. “Think of it as me making up for all the times I could’ve let you have a napoleon on the house, but didn’t.”

Luka blinks at her a couple of times. More than a couple of times. Too many words are bubbling in his throat and behind his teeth, desperate to get out, but his brain can’t catch up with any of them, and he doesn’t even know what order to put them in besides. Part of him wants to figure out _something_ smooth to say, part of him wants to laugh like an idiot and thank her, and part of him wants to take the worst leap possible and ask what she’s doing on Saturday. But before he can prioritize any of them and put his dignity even more at risk, a holler comes from upstairs—”Mari _nette_!”—and he jolts back in attention. He crumples the money in his fists and swallows his heart back down into his chest, and if he looks closely, Marinette’s cheeks are turning bright red, and her teeth are sinking into her lip as if… holding something back.

“I better go,” she says, nodding toward the stairs and taking a step back. She’s standing on the sides of her feet, and it’s honestly adorable. “Keep the change. I mean it, okay?”

Luka wants to protest—wants to say something about how his mother always told him never to take a single euro he didn’t honestly work for. Instead, he crumples the money in his fist, nods dumbly, and pockets it. “Hey,” he says, just as he senses she’s about to turn on her heel and speedwalk back up the stairs.

Marinette looks at him, and in the moment he gets that bubbling-word feeling in the back of his throat again. At least the mortifying thought of asking her out has died down, but it’s been replaced with something worse: the reminder that, for some reason, she and his sister know each other. _Is it weird?_ he wants to ask. _Are you sure it’s not weird seeing me? Is there something going on? Did Jules do something to you? Did you do something to her? Are you mad that I didn’t say anything? Are you okay?_

_Are you okay, Marinette?_

Instead, he clears the words out of his throat, and shakes his head, and he hopes Marinette isn’t running a million worst-case scenarios in her head the way he does when someone looks or sounds even mildly displeased. He hopes she isn’t blaming herself the way he does when someone looks like they have something to tell him and then… don’t. “Next time I swing by,” he says, “will that napoleon be on the house?”

Her expression doesn’t take very long to go soft, even though her grip on the delivery box tightens. “Who knows?” she murmurs, and it’s… strange, how the tongue-in-cheek traces in her voice comfort him more than they put him on edge. “Guess you’ll just have to come back and find out.”

Then she turns on her heel, nearly bumps into the counter on her way to the stairs, and—and she really does spare him one more glance, the kind that says she’d wave good night if her hands weren’t full. Without much thinking, he does the waving for both of them, with a smile he knows is nervous and crooked spreading across his face. And then he’s the one to bump backwards into the door, the bell above giggling and announcing his clumsiness, before he stumbles to his bike and speeds away. He knows better than to text and bike, even if he _could_ brag that _sometimes_ he’s halfway decent at it, but at least he waits until he gets to the Canal Saint-Martin so he can have that silent-screaming moment alone.

_so not only did I get that bread today, i got a whole fuckin sandwich. if we’re going by that whole metaphor i mean._

_speaking of figurative language, you know, that thing i never thought i’d use once i graduated from high school… dear CBG: when i told you i hope you found all that money on the ground, i didn’t mean GIVE IT TO ME._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pictured: me crawling out of the rubble after yet another set of wisdom tooth extractions
> 
> STILL ALIVE, SOMEHOW
> 
> anyway, enjoy this update! things have been a bit slow going between this and another project that i haven't started posting yet (along with a brainworm for a different fandom entirely orz), but i'm committed to seeing these stories to the end, don't worry <3

_she’s… gone? CBG is gone?_

_wait hold up, we’re going on a pre-other-job adventure. if you could even call it an adventure._

No, it’s no mistake. Marinette’s not the one standing at the counter this morning. In fact—judging from how much he can see from peering through the window in a totally-not-creepy way—she’s nowhere to be found. Mr. Dupain is there, as faithful to the shop as his apron and his hands are covered in flour. But this time it’s Mrs. Cheng at the register, kissing the top of her husband’s head when he bends it to her and inviting Luka in with a single gesture when she meets his eyes.

Well, now he _has_ to go in.

He tries with every fiber in him to mask his disappointment while he locks up his bike and slips into the bakery-patisserie, and he hangs by the door until she’s finished with a customer and beckons him closer. “Good morning, Luka!” she chirps, and it’s in that moment that he sees all the traces of her daughter in her. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Can I get you the usual?”

Luka gives her a mute smile and a nod, and he awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess it has.” Three weeks? Has it really been three weeks? “I heard you went out of the country? How was it?”

“It was nice,” Mrs. Cheng says with her usual warm smile. She’s already busy with a small pastry box and a pair of metal tongs. “Just what I needed for a while, but only for a while. You always have to come back home, after all.”

He nods, despite the fact that his home could be… literally anywhere. Could _go_ literally anywhere. Maybe it’s for that reason alone that he’s had the distinct feeling that home is made up of people and not places.

Mrs. Cheng slides the box toward him, trades it for his card, but she doesn’t let him go just yet. She disappears into the back, and returns with a thick paper cup cradled in both hands, its contents so piping hot that there’s steam rising from the little hole in the lid. “You look like you could use a good cup of tea,” she says, kind as ever—and then, as he takes out his card once more, “It’s on the house, _chou_. Your constant patronage is payment enough.”

“Wow, that’s…” Luka’s speechless for a moment. “That’s really kind of you. Thank you.”

She smiles at him, and he didn’t really realize how much he’s missed seeing it until now. Maybe it’s not so bad that she came back. (Of course it’s not so bad; what is he thinking?) “The leaves are fresh,” is all she says. Probably because she doesn’t think it’s something she needs to be thanked for. “Think of it as a souvenir.”

Before Luka lets himself out, he stops by the door and tosses a glance back. “Hey, Mrs. Cheng?”

“What is it, Luka?” She had to pause humming as she wiped down the counter and the tongs, but she doesn’t seem disturbed by it. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her disturbed by… anything, really.

His hands are too full to do anything fidgety with them, so he has to settle for scuffing the floor with his heel. “They took real good care of the shop while you were gone. Don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Mrs. Cheng’s expression goes soft. “That’s good,” is all she says, and it’s like she knows what he’s really trying to say—and honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised if she did. She’s a mother. She’s _Marinette’s_ mother. Surely there have been plenty of boys, maybe even girls, who’ve spent their fair share of time here, fawning and pining. He wouldn’t be offended if he were just a drop in the bucket.

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t considered, until now as he’s hip-checking the door, the fact that Marinette Dupain-Cheng, with the ocean name and the ocean eyes, might already be taken.

Yeah, he has to tie down the pastry box to the back of his bike, and yeah, he has to walk his bike part of the way to the Champ de Mars and ignore the buzz of every notification in his back pocket. But it’s worth taking the extra time to enjoy the tea; he doesn’t know much about all the intricacies of the stuff the way Mrs. Cheng probably does, but it’s fruity and it smells kind of like flowers and it warms his insides, the way he thinks most tea is supposed to. And it perks him right up. He knows he’s going to need that today. 

Not to mention there is, admittedly, a part of him that keeps looking around the city as he walks, and then bikes. A part of him that keeps wondering if he might catch Marinette lingering around the city. Living in it the way he does—forgetting, perhaps for a while, that other people exist. It’s the sort of thing that seeps in at the edges of his mind instead of plaguing his every waking moment. It comes to him the same way he might look at some old sheet music and remember his sister, or the way he might find an unattended mess and think, _ah, that’s Ma._

At least that makes him feel… a little _less_ like a creep.

When he gets to the park, he has to pick his spot strategically. Getting time off deliveries hardly ever means it’s time to rest; it’s either time to practice, or compose, or—his favorite—busk in parks, or metro stations, or the Trocadero plaza if he’s feeling particularly fancy. It’s not so lucrative that he can quit his other job and focus just on music, even if that would be the ultimate dream. But it gets some extra cash in his pocket, and he’d be either deaf or stupid if he ever tried to claim that his ma never taught him the value of a euro.

He decides on a bench nearby, where there are plenty of people scattered across the grass, picnicking and laughing and reading under the early summer sun. Sometimes he wonders what it might be like to belong to one of those groups, instead of half-being part of them online, but all it takes is the pop of his case and his fingers on the strings and knobs to remind him that nearly everything he has—needs—is right here.

Still, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take a moment or two after he’s eaten, with his permit clipped to the belt loop of his pants and his guitar in his lap, to fish his phone out of his pocket and scroll through his notifications one last time. It’s funny; when he started up this account, it was mostly to have a corner of the internet to himself, where he could share a few unbridled thoughts and a few more composed ones, maybe throw in a Kitty Section promotion or a clip of his latest project. Now, with a handful of new followers and likes and reposts in the double digits, he kind of has to wonder if this is his brand. Awkward musician mini-posts about a girl he’s not so scared to talk to but can’t get up the nerve to Talk To, just because it’s “wholesome.” Complete with that emoji that looks kind of like the pair of puppy dog eyes Juleka gives him when she tries to paint his nails a color that isn’t black.

And then he has to wonder, yet again, why so many people would be so invested in something like that. Why they’re so bent on following a saga about his…

Well, it’s not really a _crush…_

 _Is_ it a crush?

Oh, Jesus, no. Of course not. It’s not as though he spends every waking hour what it might be like to hold her hand, touch it beyond the occasional brush when they exchange boxes and cards. What it might be like not to have to apologize for bumping into her, or holding her attention for too long. It’s not as though he’s constantly imagined an evening moment that belongs to just the two of them, his guitar soothing her away from the pendulum swing of utter chaos and mind-numbing boredom that lives behind the register. And it’s not as though he’s felt the phantom bumps of her knees against his, or the quiet but intentional stroke of her fingers over his knuckles, or the solid feeling of their heads pressed together just before she tilts her own.

…Well. Not _all_ the time.

Luka stuffs his phone in his pocket before he can think any more about what this is and what this isn’t and what he feels and what he doesn’t. He plucks out a few scales and takes a deep breath or two—sometimes he needs to do that to remind himself that he’s a performer, a musician, he’s doing his job and he can claim this space as much as he likes. And then he starts to play.

That’s all it takes. A few bars is all it ever takes for anyone to get as closee as they can to knowing him.

Within seconds, his fingers are dancing along the fretboard of his guitar, playing fanned-out tunes, drippy arpeggios pinpricks that demand to be heard among the background echo of notes gone by. Every chord with its own texture. Every song with its own color, following the ebb and flow of choked strings. He barely realizes he’s swaying and tapping his heel to his own craft, mouthing the lyrics to songs everyone here must know, until the first person approaches and drops a bill in his case. The patrons trickle in after that: some pass by and pause to spare him the courtesy of a removed earbud; some look up from their books and start to dig around in their pockets or their bags. One girl even kicks off her shoes and pulls her boyfriend up to dance with her, and maybe that doesn’t put food in his belly, but it’s something he can carry with him like the blessed photo of his sister that he kept in his worn-out wallet.

He doesn’t look up or open his eyes often—only to nod in thanks to those who are kind enough to pay him. The one time he looks up of his own volition, he lands on a boy and two girls, seated on a pink plaid picnic blanket and chatting excitedly. One of the girls, who has dark hair in a braid and her back turned to him, suddenly swells and sits up on her knees, all animated gestures as she gets to her feet and rounds her friends, evidently to demonstrate something.

His body remembers to keep playing, but the rest of him stops.

Marinette.

The other girl clicks for him then—the reddish hair and the glasses from his delivery to the bakery—just in time for her to make eye contact with him and for a sly smile to spread across her face. She looks up toward Marinette, says something he’s grateful he can’t make out, and when Marinette looks his way with a dove’s eyes and a deer’s stance, he only winks at her and goes back to his playing and swaying.

 _GOD_ , he screams to himself. _WHY DID HE_ DO _THAT?_

He doesn’t dare look up again at least until the end of the song, and it’s a miracle that he plays even better than before he noticed her. When he does, Marinette is still watching him—has she been the whole time? Eventually, and out of the corner of her eye she kneels to gather up her friends’ trash, and she tosses them into the bin nearby. Very, very nearby. And then she kneels down again—very, very down— and drops a couple of bills into his case. It takes the rest of his bravery to lift his gaze toward her.

“First you ‘tip’ me,” he says, one hand on the guitar and the other making air quotes. “Now this?”

“Oh, come on,” she shoots back, smoothing out her skirt as she sits beside him, in spite of how her friend ribs the boy and nods their way. “This doesn’t even come close to how you’ve basically helped keep my parents’ business in the black. Besides…” She nods toward his case. “Now you can’t say you didn’t work for it.”

“Trust me.” Luka pats the body of his guitar, biting back a _told you so_ and the urge to wonder why he feels so sure of himself. What witchcraft the guitar is working to make him feel this way, or if it’s the guitar at all, or whether all it does is make him look like a total douchebag. “I’ve been working.”

“So you can play.” Marinette crosses her legs and her arms, which accentuates the new jade pendant resting in the hollow of her throat. Probably a souvenir from Mrs. Cheng, or a gift from family she’s never met. “That’s not the same as being in a band.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I’m still in one. I’ll prove it to you, if you want me to so badly.”

She grins, and it makes every hair stand on end under the heat of the sun. “Oh, yeah? And how are you gonna do that?”

“Come on—a musician never reveals his secrets.”

“That’s a _magician_ , Luka.”

This time it’s his turn to smile, just as he fights back the flare of adrenaline. “Who says I don’t make magic?”

Yeah. It’s definitely the guitar.

“So,” Marinette says. She gives a passerby an admiring look when they stop to drop a few coins in his case, and Luka can’t tell if she’s doing it to thank his patrons or lure them in. “Do you take requests?”

“What’s the matter?” Luka strums a chord, wiggles the fingers that aren’t pinching his pick. “Don’t like my take on popular songs?”

“It’s not that.” She sits back on the bench like she really intends to stay awhile. Like she doesn’t have two friends who are staring at her so intently, either because they’re waiting for her to come back or because all they’re missing is a bucket of popcorn to split. “I guess you just always gave off the vibe that you had some kind of… angle, you know? Like, you’re the type of guy who hears colors, so people can give you a color and…” She shrugs. “You could play it.”

Luka tilts his head. “I _can_ hear colors.” _And moods. And hearts. And I’ve been stuck on yours, exactly how you think I mean it, for days._ “I just never thought of it as an angle. Just an inspiration.”

Marinette blinks a couple of times in surprise, the sort that only says she wasn’t expecting his answer and thankfully not the sort that might imply that she knows what he’s thinking. “Oh. Well. Um. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“You have something in mind?” He nods toward his case; might as well spare her the awkwardness he knows too well. “You know. So I can work for it.”

She takes a moment to think, seemingly grateful to be relieved of an apology, and she sits up straight only when she meets eyes with her best friend. “Something blue,” she murmurs after a while. “I wouldn’t mind hearing that.”

She says it, and Luka thinks of her without having to look at her. He smiles to himself, adjusting his guitar in his lap and pressing his fingers to the fretboard in the almost-right way. “There’s a saying about that, where my family’s from,” he replies, just loud enough for her to hear, and he begins to play as close to her eyes as he can manage. Pulls her into his world, this place between thoughts where he can get most things just right without having to say anything, where he’s the only person that anything makes sense to—him, and anyone willing to listen.

It feels like Marinette’s willing to listen.

The notes trail off once he reaches the part he hasn’t quite figured out, the sparkle in her eyes he hasn’t quite captured, and he’s felt her gaze on him long before he cuts the music and looks her way. “Something like that?” he says. It’s only then that he notices the extra money in his case, and judging from the look on Marinette’s face, she wasn’t the one who put it all there.

But she smiles at him all the same, gets to her feet and dusts off her skirt. “Something like that,” she replies. And then, before she returns to her friends. “I guess this is where I can find you now, huh?”

Like that’s supposed to _mean something._

 _Is_ it supposed to _mean something?_

“I mean,” he says. “You could order something again.”

“I mean,” Marinette says back as she walks away, “I could pick up a couple more shifts at the bakery.”

Luka doesn’t bother with his phone, or any technology, until he gets home—long after he’s settled below deck. It’s only then—because of course it’s right _then_ —that inspiration sparks like a match. Only then that he scrambles for cables and plugs and the laptop he and Juleka used to share until they gifted her a new one for university.

_song update. better quality than my phone, even. hit that play button, pals. and thanks for the likes._


	10. Chapter 10

**from: itsdjbubbles  
hey dude! i know you don’t know me or whatever but like, i wanted to tell you that clip you just posted was FIRE. and also i’m pretty sure we’re in the same city? i think i heard you playing this on the champ de mars yesterday. i didn’t have any cash on me but i totally would’ve given you some if i did.**

**anyway, nice tunes and hope you’re havin a good one**

Luka’s only glad this message hasn’t been sitting in his request box for very long. Otherwise, he’d _really_ feel like a total douchebag. And an _ungrateful_ douchebag on top of that, considering the new clip he posted… isn’t doing as well as he’d like. Not even as well as the first version, the thirty seconds he recorded on his phone and slapped on the internet because his soul all but compelled him to. It’s not that he’s comparing himself to other musicians on here; he rarely does this stuff for the numbers, anyway. It’s more that he’s comparing himself to… himself. The thing that he loves doing, puts hours of himself into, versus… these simple, giveaway details of his life that he posts without a second thought, because, well, where else is he going to put them?

Is this the case with every artist? Because if it is, then that’s just… stupid.

It’s half-past midnight, but Luka still pushes himself out of bed and shuffles to the couch, using the light of his phone to guide his path. His mother and Juleka are surprisingly asleep by now—he’s pretty sure at least half of France is, in spite of what this city has to offer—but he’s hardly ever been opposed to the comfort of the quiet and the dark. At least it gives him a chance to read the message a few more times.

It’s not often that people reach out to him privately. In fact, most of his direct messages are from people he’d befriended on other social media platforms, or occasionally someone who, like this Bubbles person, just wanted to let him know they liked his work and hoped he was having a nice day. It’s not that he thinks that he’s better than the people who are brave enough to reach out. He’s just never really known how to answer those kinds of messages beyond a _thank you_ , so he’s tended to leave them be, or worse—never accept them in the first place, so they’d never know he read them at all.

It sort of makes him wonder how people dealt with situations like this a century or two ago. Maybe they just never left their houses, so they could never be called upon. So they never had to be known.

That wouldn’t be so bad, if he didn’t have to make money. Or if he didn’t like the sun so much.

Well. He supposes with technology like this, he’s coming pretty close.

Out of curiosity, Luka taps Bubbles’s icon, just to peek at their profile. He balks at the follower count—it’s well over a thousand—and judging by the content they post, he’s pretty sure almost none of them are those stupid bots looking to make ad revenue or ensure their devices are brimming with viruses. Or worse—argue against human rights, as though they’re something to be argued against. Bubbles’s page is funny, and vibrant, and rife with links to this other website he’s only ever heard of in jokes. It makes him halfway wonder how many of Bubbles’s posts have blown up—and how many they’ve actually responded to with a tip jar link or a _peep my Soundcloud_.

Whatever this Bubbles person is doing, it’s working. And it’s working _right._

They don’t have any pictures of themselves on their page, or even as their profile picture. In fact, the most Luka finds is a silhouette of them from a nightclub, somehow darker than black and highlighted by strobes of bold, bright light. And the most he can make out of _that_ is the rim of a pair of round glasses, and layers of thick dreadlocks.

It probably doesn’t matter. Even if he pulled off some crazed theorist thing with wild hair and enough red yarn to map out every arrondissement, he probably couldn’t have picked out glasses and dreadlocks out of a crowd on the Champ de Mars if he tried and wasn’t distracted by his own work.

But what could it hurt to say hi back?

Luka pops in his headphones, because the music is the only thing that actually lets him concentrate, and starts to type his response in the notes app on his phone. He doesn’t want to accidentally send something he hasn’t read and reread, or hasn’t even finished typing. And if Bubbles just so happens to be checking their messages, he doesn’t want to keep them waiting with all the typing and deleting and re-typing and re-deleting. He’s been on the receiving end of those eerily calm ellipses enough times to never want to subject anyone else to that. Eventually—and eventually is a long time, even for him—he comes up with something he’s actually satisfied with.

**to: itsdjbubbles  
hey, sorry for replying so late, i didn’t get any notification. but thanks for the compliment. it’s really cool of you to message me in the first place, i appreciate it. sorry about the cash thing, but don’t worry about it. i’d like to do it full-time someday, but it’s more of a side hustle thing for now. maybe i’ll get one of those venmo or cashapp things for people who don’t carry cash. (i mean, you’re right, who does that, anyway? it’s the 21st century.)**

With a deep breath and both legs bouncing, Luka taps the SEND button. And then he decides that was an awkward place to end a message, because apparently you can read and reread and edit and re-edit, and you’ll still find every little thing wrong _after_ you post, so he sends a follow-up message as quickly as he can.

**anyway, thanks for the message. hope you’re having a good night.**

Assuming Bubbles is even awake.

As soon as he puts his phone face-down in his lap, his blood runs cold with relief, and his hands start to tremble and tingle in spite of how the music still blasts in his ears. He tries to calm himself down by placing the color of each song, but after just a few of them he starts feeling that familiar buzz of sensory overload. In the end, he has to lie back and close his eyes and bask in total silence, just to get his head back on straight.

A message.

He sent a message.

His phone buzzes from its place on his stomach, and immediately he scrambles for it, squinting against the bright light of his screen. There’s a single notification.

Bubbles.

He shouldn’t already be this excited to talk to Bubbles.

**from: itsdjbubbles  
dude, you’re still up? don’t you have work in the morning?**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
no but for real, you should consider sharing on other sites or picking up some other gigs if you haven’t already.**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
like lol i know we just met and all but i know a place i DJ sometimes that’d totally like your vibe. just lmk if you’re interested?**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
anyway, we should probably get some sleep huh. g’night!**

It’s… funny. How this is all it takes for opportunity to fall into his lap.

Luka gets to his feet, a tired grin inching its way across his face, and shuffles right back to bed, another message under his thumb. Except this time, he doesn’t bother to open up his notes. If Bubbles knows he’s up, he might as well own it. Just for now.

**to: itsdjbubbles  
i’m going, i’m going, don’t worry, haha.**

**to: itsdjbubbles  
yeah, i’ll think about it. why don’t you send me their info?**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
you got it, dude.**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
also**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
good luck with CBG and all**

**from: itsdjbubbles  
though from the looks of it, maybe you won’t need it??**

Luka’s eyes blow wide open enough to start asking in his head, _what does it mean? what does it all mean?_ Instead, he presses his phone to his face, because asking—and screaming—will definitely wake up his family, and types out one more reply.

**to: itsdjbubbles  
trust me. vaguely knowing her, i think i will.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes i wish i could update this more frequently than i do, but the writing has been slow going because of a) other pieces i'm working on and b) work kicking back into high gear 😣 but i really appreciate your patience all the same.
> 
> it's looking like this first part of the story will be about 24 or 25 chapters, plus a sequel somewhere in the pipeline. i'm actually really excited for it, but i have some questions about it for you that'd super help me guide how i want to get it out! if you could leave a comment with your thoughts, i'd be super appreciative.
> 
> 1) would you prefer the sequel to be from Marinette's point of view? or a mix of Marinette and Luka?
> 
> 2) if you'd like a mix, would you like a retelling of Chronicles from Marinette's point of view, too, to balance it all out?
> 
> 3) do you like the narrative format? or should i try my hand at making it look more like a social media AU? or a mix of both?
> 
> thank you so so much! your feedback will really help me figure out what i want to do going forward 💙🎶💖

_damn, uh. i wasn’t expecting you all to like that so much. i guess i just needed to give it a little more time to sink in._

_it’s only a work in progress, but hey. here’s hoping you’ll like it when it’s all done. thanks for giving it a chance @itsdjbubbles_

Marinette was looking at a billboard of Adrien Agreste back then. He’s not so stupid that he didn’t notice. And it wasn’t that typical Celebrity Crush Stare, either. He knew what those looked like. He’d worn them, sometimes even daydreamed about someone looking at him like that from an audience pit. This was different. This was… wistful. The kind that said something could have been, but never was.

Did Marinette… know Adrien Agreste? Like, personally? She _had_ mentioned getting a letter of recommendation from his father, after all. Had she done some kind of special work? Or entered some contest? Maybe she’d only gotten a handful of passing glances when she had the distinguished honor of weaving through the halls of the illustrious Agreste mansion. (Luka didn’t actually know if it could be called “illustrious;” it simply looked that way from the outside, and it wasn’t as though any of the Agrestes had deigned to order food from his job, so it wasn’t as though he could just waltz in and find out.)

Something was there. And Luka didn’t _need_ to find out what that something was. But he wanted to. Curiosity hadn’t killed him yet—

“Ow!”

Across the ping pong table, Juleka fans herself with her paddle, eyeing the ball that smacked him in the face as it rolls away. “Game, set, and match,” she says with a deadpan expression. “Should’ve known thinking about Bakery Girl wouldn’t help you win.”

“I wasn’t thinking about her,” Luka insists to no avail.

“Liar.”

He relents, rolls his eyes, picks up the ping pong ball. “One more.”

“Nah.” Juleka sets her paddle down and starts to cut through the greenhouse area on the _Liberty_. “It’s no fun winning when you’re all distracted. Even you letting me win is more fun than that.”

Defeated, Luka picks up the ping pong ball—the only victory, considering how many of them they’ve lost to the Seine—and goes after her. She was right to fan herself; it’s way too hot to function on deck, so he ties his hoodie around his waist and wrestles his hair into a short ponytail. Sure, it’s due for a cut and a dye, and sure, Juleka would pounce on the opportunity if he asked, but there are more important things to worry about than his hair. And it surprises him to even think that. “Honestly, I… didn’t think you wanted to bring her up again.”

To an untrained eye, Juleka wouldn’t have frozen or flinched, but he knows his sister better than that. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s my God-given right as your younger sibling to rib you about any and every crush you have.”

“Do you even believe in God?”

“Only when you make me ride on the back of your bike.”

Touché. Luka stifles a faint laugh and sinks to the couch. Twenty-one years on this boat, and he’s never thought to question why there’s an entire vintage furniture set in a greenhouse. But then, he’s never been one to question his own mother—even if she’s made it a point time after time after time to question authority at every corner. At least it’s cooler with the glass to protect them, and Juleka looks so unfazed in all that black that she has to be stronger than that pathetic thing America calls an army.

“Hey,” he says after a moment. “Do you wanna talk about it?” He doesn’t bank on her saying yes, but these days, everything feels like it’s worth a shot. Even if he ends up kicking himself after. If he can survive winking at Marinette Dupain-Cheng and then having a full-blown conversation with her after, he can probably do literally anything else.

It doesn’t surprise him that Juleka shakes her head, but at least he doesn’t feel like kicking himself after all.

“Is it…” He pauses to gather his words; he’s pretty sure Juleka’s one of the only people he could do that for. “Is it one of those things that you want to forget ever happened? You know?” He knows. There are plenty of things he wants to forget, too.

“Nah,” Juleka finally says. “It’s more like… I don’t think it’s my thing to tell.”

Luka isn’t exactly sure what that’s supposed to mean; the only thing it tells him is not to ask her any more questions—that he should go to Marinette with them instead. And he’s not even sure that that’s the best idea. It might take a few more napoleons. A few more deliveries.

He decides to change the subject. “So I started talking to this guy.”

Juleka cocks her head and folds herself up on the armchair. “Huh. That was fast.”

“ _No,_ I mean…” He rolls his eyes. “He could get us a gig.”

This time, her expression shifts from sardonic to wary. He has to wonder if anyone else can see these little differences, besides him and Rose. “How do you know he’s legit?”

“I think a couple thousand followers and some DJ sets are pretty legit.”

“How do you know he doesn’t want something from you?”

“Well…” Luka holds his breath in his lungs. She has a point. A couple of points, actually. Sure, they’ve been private messaging back and forth for a few days now, but he still, admittedly, doesn’t know a whole lot about this Bubbles guy. Most of the content they post goes right to Soundcloud, as if the account is automatically linked to post every time a new song or clip goes up. And admittedly, the music is pretty good. Hell, he’s only seen that one silhouette, and that’s the closest he’s gotten to a photo. For all they both know, Bubbles could up and swindle them out of their own guitars. And it’s not like he’s actively trying to compare himself to Adrien Agreste, but he at least wants to keep one of the reasons that might make Marinette want to keep talking to him. It’s not as though all he has to do is exist and have his face plastered all over half of Paris.

It’s just…

It’s just that Luka’s wound his way around the internet enough times to know when kindness is just too kind. He’s been around the block with people who try to get to know him after one song or one close-to-tasteful selfie, only for him to find out exactly what they want from him. He’s gotten on with enough people who ended up blocking him or posting vague, passive aggressive things that he thought he knew—and then definitely knew—were about him. And if Bubbles really was on the Champ de Mars that afternoon, then there was nothing in that park that told him to be scared. Not a single suspicious note.

“I don’t,” he confesses. “Not totally. But I want to believe him.”

“Do you want to believe him?” Juleka asks. “Or are you looking for a reason to impress _her_?”

For a flicker of a moment—long enough for only his sister to have the eye to notice—Luka can feel his expression go sour. If his guitar weren’t safely downstairs, he’d be holding it close for his own security. Instead, he gets to his feet with a sudden rush of energy, and he makes for the watering can. The plants are looking a little dry. Or maybe he’s just looking for something to do. Something to need him for a bit. “Music’s been around for me before I even knew she existed,” he says, quiet enough for the rug and the upholstery and the leaves to absorb before anyone else does. “And it’ll be there for me till I’m dead and buried. It’s my guarantee, Jules, and I should at least pay it back for everything it’s done for me.”

“That’s not a no.” At least she lets the silence hit before she says it.

Luka sets the watering can down, shuffles his way out of the greenhouse and back into the sun. “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m not totally opposed to it being a yes.”

What is his music, he thinks, if he doesn’t share it with anyone? Just another one-way conversation? Hasn’t he had enough of those?

Behind him, Juleka catches up and takes him by the wrist. “Come on,” she says with a conceding sigh. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

She flicks his little ponytail. “You need a re-up,” she says simply. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

So he puts his time in Juleka’s hands, and he’s never quite sure how long it takes, but he doesn’t mind her taking care of him while he tries—and fails—to forget about Adrien Agreste, and while he gives his messages with Bubbles another go. He even dares to post a picture—not of himself, but of his sneakers, cluttered with designs and as loud as the personality he sometimes wishes he had. The personality that only barely pokes through when Bubbles says something about a set and a club and a real, actual date and time.

_look, ma. no vans. and no dollars. and no dates._


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the insight from the last chapter ;u;!! this will definitely help me piece together how i want to set up the sequel.
> 
> and... maybe the NY special helped a little too :)

**from: itsdjbubbles**  
**29 July, 19:30. La Tortue. you and your group got a setlist?**

**to: itsdjbubbles**  
**i… could have a setlist. and we’re more of a band than a group.**

**from: itsdjbubbles**  
**hell yeah, dude. you’re in.**  
  


* * *

_  
just saw adrien agreste in person. In Person. i don’t think i can even afford his aura. or, like. the CO2 he’s breathing out?_

_no, i’m not going to say where. i’m not a total dickwad. just sometimes. mostly because my sister would come for me if i didn’t say so._

_also, fellow parisians, who hopefully are not or have not been as much of a dumbass as me: watch this space for an announcement, maybe._

Adrien Agreste is right. There. In all his swoopy-blond-hair, thousand-euro-smile, million-euro-clothing glory. Hanging by the doorway, and seeing him standing at the register like an actual human being, and laughing like an actual human being, and paying with a debit card like an actual human being, is like looking into the goddamn sun. Or like standing in the weird static, plasma dimension that exists between the TV screen and real life. Or both.

Okay. Luka will admit that, for a time that now feels both distant and delirious, he… probably entertained a celebrity crush on Adrien Agreste. But it was short-lived, and it felt more like a warm fuzz in his stomach whenever he passed by those radiant advertisements for perfume, men’s clothing, even underwear. Really, the more he thought about it, the more he was just admitting that Adrien Agreste had a certain charm and attraction because he, like many people in Paris, had a functional pair of eyes.

It was… fantasy, really. Self-indulgent. The way most infatuation tends to be. Observation with a cause; he heard it once in a song.

Adrien Agreste is still standing right. There. At the register. And Luka hasn’t moved from the entrance. Not even when the door hits him unceremoniously in the back and the bell above it mocks him as it announces his arrival.

And then Adrien Agreste turns on his heel, slipping his wallet into his back pocket with one seemingly perfect hand and gripping a pastry box with the other, and Luka’s body reminds him to step aside. He does, still dumbstruck despite how Adrien Agreste literally smiles at him and says _good morning_ , and the door closes behind him again, and not for the first time in his life, Luka forgets what words are or how to string them together.

When he comes to his senses and makes peace with the fact that he just shared the same breathing air as a real-live supermodel, he notices—even from this far away—that Marinette is wearing that expression again. The one from the park. The one he wishes never existed—because even if this is another observation with a cause, he at least has the good sense to know that Marinette Dupain-Cheng does not deserve to look so sad, no matter how many smiles she layers on top of it.

Until now, it seems like Marinette’s only been looking past him, but when her eyes finally settle on him, she perks up a bit from her place at the register. “You dyed your hair,” she says by way of greeting, and he swears her face starts to glow. Or maybe it always was glowing. Maybe it wasn’t because of him.

“Uh,” he replies, because when has he ever been smooth when she’ s looking at him like that? or at all? “Technically, Jules did.” He says it hurriedly, so neither of them has to worry about it or talk about it, but then she has to go and tell him that it looks _good_ on him, and his words have to get stuck on his tongue again when he says, “Thanks, I grew it myself.”

Kill him. Now. He’s ready. Juleka can have his guitar.

“So,” he goes on, a little perkier than he means to, but it’s probably for the best. “That was, uh… that Adrien Agreste guy, huh? You know him or something?”

Marinette’s expression is almost unreadable. It is hard to tell if she regrets knowing Adrien, or if she thinks Luka must be living under a rock because _everyone_ knows who Adrien Agreste is. She snaps back to herself soon enough, and she’s browsing the pastry cases as though it’s her responsibility to find something good for him. “We used to go to middle school together,” she explains. “Just for a while. I even used to have this mondo crush on him. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah,” Luka says, because he can’t count how many times he’s imagined her in love, much less how many times he’s imagined other people in love with her. “Huh. I pegged him as the type to get homeschooled or something.” He tosses a glance behind him, just to see if the limo is still there, but it’s long since peeled away. “What… happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“You…” He pauses. “You said, ‘used to?’”

“Oh,” she says, half-flippant, with a sheepish laugh to match. “Y’know.”

Luka narrows his eyes. “No, I don’t,” he says. “That’s… why I asked?” Even though he maybe, definitely shouldn’t have because it maybe, definitely isn’t his business.

Marinette shrugs, busies herself with boxing up a selection. He doesn’t even have to ask. (Is it good that he doesn’t have to ask?) “I switched schools. That’s all. Turns out absence doesn’t really make the heart grow fonder after all.”

It doesn’t sound like that’s all, especially if the bittersweet look on her face has anything to say about it, but who is he to push? Who is he to do anything but peek into her life and feel grateful, privileged, for what she’s allowed him?

“Anyway,” she goes on; it’s mesmerizing, watching her multitask. The grace with which she can open herself up, so clipped, while taping a box shut. “Our friend is making this music video for a summer class he’s taking. He’s really into film, you know? And we’re playing opposite each other in it. I guess he wanted to come by and chat about it, but I think he had something else in mind.”

Luka’s brow furrows.

When Marinette turns, box in hand, her lips scrunch up awkwardly. Like she’s the one who doesn’t know what to say this time. “Now he’s the one who…”

Oh. Well. Fuck.

“I turned him down,” she adds with a shrug. “In high school. And we’re still… sort of friends. We text and stuff, have a couple of mutual friends. I just get the sense those feelings—his, I mean—never really went away. There’s just… something I can’t shake. Do you know what I mean?”

Does he know what she means? Does he feel? He nods, dumbly, and maybe this moment separated by a counter and a cash register isn’t supposed to be as deep and twisted and thorny as it is. But it is, and it feels that way because he feels, and he wonders if she feels it, too. If there are parts of her that never went away, either.

“Sorry,” Marinette blurts out once the moment ends—too soon, as far as he’s concerned. “You didn’t ask to hear all that.”

“I don’t mind.” Luka offers her a smile because it’s the best thing he has on him. “Life stories, remember?”

She smiles back. It’s slow, and knowing, and it makes him melt in his shoes. “Are you gonna make a song about it, Music Man?”

Okay. Okay. _Wow._

Maybe it was worth staying alive for literally this one moment.

“I could write a song about it,” he says; it’s a miracle he doesn’t stammer. “Would you come and listen to it?”

“In the park?”

“At a gig.”

Marinette looks surprised, and then impressed, and damn if he doesn’t want to keep doing things that make her make that face. “Maybe I will,” she says, almost demure, like he asked her on a date or something. (Did he? Ask her on a date?) She looks just past him, and when he follows her gaze it lands on a bulletin board by the door. “Maybe you should swing by with a flyer or something.”

“Maybe I will.” Wow, two for two. He takes the box, reaches for his wallet. “I’ll watch that video, too, we’ll call it even—”

Her hand is on his before he can even pull out his card. And it isn’t until after she’s pushed his wallet back toward him that it finally registers that she’s touched him. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s on the house. Just bring the flyer, and then we’ll call it even.”

Luka looks between her and the box a number of times, too many questions on his tongue to get any of them out. Why is she being so nice to him? why does she insist on giving him things he hasn’t worked for, or finding loopholes to prove that he did work for it? Is she flirting with him? Or does she pity him? Or is she just being nice because he’s one of her parents’ regulars? Or does she… does she, maybe…

He holds his breath, and searches her eyes, and gets lost in the music he’s still sort of trying to place. He slips his wallet into his back pocket all the same, and he takes the box from her, and it’s ridiculous how fiercely he wishes he could feel her fingers brush the back of his hand again. “You got a deal,” he murmurs—mentally kicks himself for sounding so out of touch. He backs out of the store like it’s illegal to tear his eyes away; it feels like it is, when she’s smiling at him like that. The Not For Customers smile.

Admittedly, he wonders if she ever gave Adrien Agreste that smile, once upon a time.

Maybe he shouldn’t have wondered, because his back bumps right into the door, and the bell above it jingles as though it’s annoyed. But Marinette isn’t; in fact, she giggles behind a hand, and she gives him a little wave like she’s going to keep the memory safe in the pocket of her apron. He manages a weak laugh, and a wave of his own, and then he’s stumbling out the door and walking his bike to the first open bench he can find. He needs to sit down. Put his head in his hands for a while.

Because he thinks she just flirted with him. And he thinks he flirted right back. And he _knows_ she just touched him, in spite of everything she told him about Adrien, in spite of him being right. There. And it’s all finally, finally sinking in, and the world is spinning in a way he’s not really used to, and…

Maybe he just needs a sugar boost.

Shaking his head and sighing, he pops the seal on the pastry box, fully prepared to find a half dozen napoleons inside. There aren’t—only two pastries.

One napoleon.

And one pear tart.

His heart stutters. Makes up for how he didn’t before.

That’s how it gets him.

_hey mom? mr. president? deity of indeterminate gender?_

_how do i go about legally changing my name to Music Man?_

_you know. hypothetically._


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all. sorry i've been so quiet like... literally everywhere. it's been, a lot lately, as you can imagine. i'm doing my best on my end and i hope you are too. i'm coming back to things. slowly.

_29 July, La Tortue. You in?_

Luka has been, quite frankly, working his ass off like he never has before.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. He remembers at least sort of working this hard to study for the _bac_ , even if by most standards he nearly passed by the skin of his teeth. And he remembers at least sort of working this hard to find a paying job once he could actually have a job. But those ventures were for other people. To make a school district look good. To put food on the table even when he didn’t much feel like eating himself. This… he might even say this is the first time he’s worked so hard for himself, taken every bull he could find by the horns and steered it toward this club Bubbles has been hyping up, instead of figuring out where the things he loved decided to take him.

…Okay, and _maybe_ he’s been doing some of this with Marinette in mind. But it isn’t entirely because of her, and he’d be dead and buried before he’d admit that Juleka’s right about this.

But what’s so bad about having a reason to work so hard? What’s wrong with calling the band together to practice when they’d been so lax about performances before? And what’s so bad about having a face to focus on in his imaginary audience whenever he closes his eyes? Or about having their setlist running like ticker tape in his head whenever he has a quiet moment in between deliveries? Or about splitting his attention between his messages to Bubbles and the tireless search for that perfect shade of blue music in the middle of the night?

Isn’t this what drives art? A color, a smile, a touch of the hand? Doesn’t this stuff launch ships and pen poetry? Isn’t it the little things, the things that are inconsequential to almost everyone else, that makes a painting into a masterpiece, or a song into a symphony?

Juleka says it once at the end of practice. Mostly with a jerk of her thumb and the hollow drawl of, “Get a load of _this_ guy.”

Luka barely hears it, mostly because he’s crossed the room to study a heap of sheet music and rearrange it for what feels like the third time this hour. But he has enough spare energy, between writing and erasing and rewriting, to raise a middle finger behind him.

“Oh, come on,” Rose laughs, stepping back from the microphone; in seconds, he can feel her looming over him, studying with him. He doesn’t mind it, or how she rests her chin on his head, simply because they’ve known each other so long. “You just wanna get it right for our big break, right?”

Luka’s gotten a lot of things right; it’s easy to do when he keeps the bar for “right” on the ground nine times out of ten. He doesn’t want to get it right. He wants to get it perfect. And, as it turns out, the tenth time is the most finicky son of a bitch he’s ever dealt with. Which is saying something, when he’s been at the mercy of hungry customers more times than he can count.

“We’ll get it,” Rose encourages him with a friendly kiss to the top of his head. Her voice sounds tired. Maybe even worn out. “But it’s not gonna go anywhere if you leave it alone for a while. I promise. Come on, let’s give it a rest.”

After a moment, he sighs, rights his papers, and rests his forehead on the keyboard he’s had to use as a makeshift desk. It makes the most distressing mix of notes in protest, but he hardly winces; it’s not like he’s ever been able to play it properly, anyway. “Fine,” he relents. “I’ll make you some tea and meet you upstairs.”

A shift in the air tells him neither Rose nor Juleka believes him. In the end, Juleka says, “Fine,” and Rose unravels from him, and their footsteps fade up the stairs.

With a sigh, Luka lifts his head from the piano, sure that the keys must have left some kind of mark, and finds Ivan still there, seated half-uncomfortably behind the drum set and twirling one of the sticks in his fingers.

“Juleka gave me The Look,” is all Ivan says, but it’s enough of an explanation. They’ve all been on the business end of The Look before. Even Rose, and maybe Luka more than most. He can see it in his head from the words alone.

“I get it, I get it,” Luka says, and he sets to work putting the kettle on and fishing out a couple of teabags and mismatched mugs from the cupboard. “You want a soda? Last one before we go grocery shopping—”

Ivan shakes his head. “You have it.”

Luka tosses him a water bottle instead, impressed by how he downs half of it in one go, and dismisses his apology when he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The kettle’s still going. They’ve got time to kill.

“She… kinda has a point,” Ivan mumbles after more than a beat of silence, like he’s uncertain about being too honest. Luka’s always thought he had nothing to worry about—Ivan’s much more tender than first glances would have others believe, and maybe tiptoes more than he should to fight those first glances. But he’s also had more than his fair share of overthinking the right words to say when music doesn’t suffice, and of regretting the words no matter how he ends up stringing them together, so he can’t really blame him.

Luka decides to bite. “What d’you mean?”

“I dunno,” Ivan says, which usually means that he does know but is looking for the right way to cushion his words. “It does kinda feel like you’ve gone into turbo mode about this whole gig. But like, Luka-Couffaine-Style Turbo Mode.”

“Is that better or worse than the average?”

“Well… it’s definitely different. It’s like you tune everything out and go… I guess, somewhere inside yourself that the rest of us can’t see.” Ivan shrugs. “I guess maybe she’s worried that it’s so nice in there that you won’t come back out.”

Luka smiles grimly at the stovetop. “You’re not gonna tell me there’s no I in ‘band,’ are you?”

Ivan laughs and takes another swig. “Nah, that sounds like something a guidance counselor would say. More like… it’s okay to come out sometimes.”

Luka bites his tongue and resists the urge to joke that he already does it every time he meets someone new. Instead, he busies himself with turning off the kettle and making the tea. “Hey, uh… you don’t mind if I ask you something weird i do you?”

“I’m already scared,” Ivan jokes, “but go ahead.”

Luka pauses, tea bag in hand. “How did… you and Mylène get together?”

When he turns, it’s hard to say just how Ivan’s expression’s shifted, but he knows it has. Reminiscing, maybe? Or is that... cringing? Or—for better or worse—understanding? “I, uh, wrote her a song. It… didn’t exactly go well.”

“What d’you mean, it didn’t go well? You’re dating, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but. “Ivan shrugs. “It’s not like we just magically came together or anything. There were hiccups, I guess. You know?”

Luka knew hiccups better than the back of his hand. “So… what happened?”

Ivan tells him everything. How he liked Mylène and how sometimes it felt like everyone knew it but her. Or how maybe she knew after all, but didn’t want to, now maybe she even pretended she didn’t to let him down easy. How he buzzed from head to toe just sitting next to her in class but barely talked to her because he didn’t feel like he had the right to. The nights he stayed up thinking about it, wildly swinging back and forth between _what if she doesn’t?_ and _but God, what if she does?_ How he was teased and goaded by his classmates into finally gathering up the courage to confess to her, and humiliating them both with that stupid, loud song. And how, at the end of the day, all she needed to do was read the lyrics.

“It didn’t have to be perfect,” Ivan tells him. “It just had to be good.”

Luka smiles to himself at the end of it all, and feels his stomach turn, and wonders in the silence if all Marinette needs to do is hear the notes.

“Is it?” Ivan asks. “A girl? The one you’ve been posting about?”

Luka doesn’t say anything. He only takes the tray of drinks, and gives a little shrug, and nods toward the stairs. He gets the feeling Ivan would know without words anyway.

_Cause I’m in. In fact, I’ve never been more “in” in my life._


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Chronicles Update! I promise I'm still trucking along on this baby. I think?? We've also officially reached the halfway mark on this installment, which is kind of. Wow. That's WILD.
> 
> anyway, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> P.S. it's Chronicles's birthday on Tuesday!!! a whole year, isn't that nuts?? time flies…

_welcome to today’s episode of Luka’s Word to the Wise: whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be perfect. it just has to be good._

_thanks, I._

Ivan is right. And technically, so is his Ma, who’s been telling him and Juleka this for as long as he can remember. But Luka will give them the gratification of saying _I told you so_ when this is all over. Even though he could take a stab in the dark and guess that only one of them would take him up on that offer. And it wouldn’t be Ivan. And it wouldn’t be his Ma.

In between messaging back and forth with Bubbles over the next couple of days, Luka puts together a flyer. It’s not exactly the best—just something he threw together on one of those free graphic design websites, definitely nothing like a _Gabriel_ billboard. But it’s punchy, and it fits the vibe, and it gets the overall message across. And more importantly, Juleka doesn’t give him The Look for it. In fact, she smiles over his shoulder when it’s done, and she rubs her fist in his hair, and she affectionately says, “ _Now_ can you chill?”

Luka only grins and throws her into a fireman’s carry for another round of ping-pong. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t know how to be totally chill any more.

They pool pocket money, leftovers from past paychecks, to put in an order for copies at the local print shop. Only Rose has ever been; she tells them she’s tagged along with a couple of old friends from an art club to print issues of the comic they’ve been working on together. It’s nice to see her take the lead, point out the best paper stocks and finishes and spot colors, whatever those are, based on what she’s overheard. It certainly beats the alternative: four barely-adults standing awkwardly at the counter, pretending they know what they’re doing.

Even if, according to Luka’s Ma, that’s most of what adulthood is, anyway.

They decide on something glossy because it makes the colors pop, and admittedly Luka has to thank his lucky, anxious stars for saving the file in every format imaginable because he wasn’t sure which one they’d need. Before he leaves them and heads to work on his bike, Juleka gives him another smile, and Ivan manages a single, subtle nod, and Rose’s eyes sparkle. And it’s starting to feel a little less like a thing he needs to do. It’s a thing he wants to do. With them.

And, well. Any bonuses are just that. Bonuses.

These days, Luka’s made it a point to bike past the bakery on his way to work, because if he’s as much of a regular as the Dupain-Cheng family claims, then he might as well act like it. To be fair, he doesn’t always stop in to talk or buy something; in fact, most times he doesn’t. maybe it’s some silly sense of hope that he’ll be seen. That Marinette really did talk to her parents about picking up an extra shift or two behind the counter. That there’s still room on the bulletin board for him—them. And most times, it is just Mrs. Cheng at the storefront, organizing displays or chatting with a friendly customer.

But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it is Marinette, idly staring at the window with what he can only assume is her sketchbook at her side and her apron tied around her waist. And sometimes, she looks up at him. And sometimes, she waves and smiles with all the warmth and none of the sweat of July.

That’s why he does it. For the sometimes.

The flyers, once they’re printed, are nothing short of gorgeous, but Luka can’t bring himself to take any of the credit for it. More than anything, he’s just happy to see his bandmates all in on this, even if he did jump in with both feet. Even if they do still rib him during practice about how he’s way too invested in this. (At least Mylène has only nice things to say. He’ll have to remember to order a few extra pastries just for her.)

They split the flyers into four stacks, because of course Mylène insists on helping and of course Rose and Juleka insist on going together. They run or pedal off in different directions once they’ve put a game plan together, and at least Luka can credit them for not teasing when he offers to take the third and fourth arrondissement. They all know it’s where the bakery is, in spite of how he talks up the Place des Vosges. They know, and they don’t have to say anything.

He’s still trying to figure out whether it’s a blessing or a curse to have your real-life friends on your social media accounts.

Even as he’s hanging the flyers in downtown coffee shops, in libraries, on signposts and public bulletin boards, Luka can’t stop staring. With every flyer he pins or tapes up, he finds something new to love about it. A splash of neon color in the top left corner. The jagged, cutting edges of the lettering. The blurred glow of a spotlight. Every time he looks, he gets the feeling that he’s already there. Music pounding in his ears, stage lights burning so bright and hot they make him sweat, fresh calluses on his fingertips that he’ll regret and adore later. He doesn’t think of stardom often, but he imagines this is something close to it.

At the very least, it’s what he would want to make of it.

It’s close to closing by the time Luka arrives at the bakery-patisserie; the usual lingering smells of fresh bread and sugary frosting and the easygoing music are both conspicuously absent when he walks in. But Mr. Dupain and Ms. Cheng are both missing from the storefront, and he has to double check the time on his phone to make sure he didn’t accidentally arrive too late, or that he’s not interrupting some closing routine. It shouldn’t take long; he spent almost the whole bike ride over rehearsing what he needed to say. He looks around cautiously, even clears his throat in case it gets someone’s attention.

It does. Marinette pops up from behind the counter with a squeak, and it startles him so much he nearly drops the stack of remaining flyers in his arms. And that would’ve been a pain in the ass as much as it would’ve been _straight_ out of one of Rose’s cute romcoms for Marinette to round the counter and help him pick them up until their hands brushed over the same one.

Jesus. He really needs to get out of the house on his sister’s date nights.

He really needs to _have_ a date night.

He also really needs to stop thinking about date nights when the person he’d actually consider a date night with is right in front of—

“Luka?”

He blinks to attention, standing awkwardly in the quiet. God, he really hopes he wasn’t staring at her when he zoned out like that. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

Marinette shrugs it off with an apologetic smile. “We’re fresh out of napoleons, you know,” she says casually, slipping past him to flip the sign on the door. “Guess you’ll just have to come first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah, I guess I will—wait—” He shakes his head. “No, that’s not why I’m here.”

Marinette pauses at that. Even seems to stand a little taller, intrigued. Hopeful? “Oh…? Then why… _are_ you here?”

Meekly, Luka holds up one of the Kitty Section flyers and nods toward the bulletin board. Here’s hoping he— _it_ — isn’t too much of a disappointment.

Marinette squints at the flyer for a second, and then her eyes widen and spark in delight. She looks… impressed, at least. which isn’t to say she’s never seemed impressed by him before. It just makes all the things he’s been working for a little more worth it. “Wow,” she says. “You really weren’t kidding about being in a band, huh.”

“You know it,” he says with what he prays is a casual shrug; this… wasn’t part of the script. “I don’t wear this thing on my back just to look pretty.”

She stifles a laugh, then claps a hand to her mouth immediately. “Sorry, I didn’t—I wasn’t implying that you’re _not_ handsome—pretty— “

Oh God. She’s stammering. And it’s _adorable._

Marinette composes herself with a deep breath and her arms folded over her chest. “There are pushpins in the corner,” she says. “Hang it up wherever you want.”

Except Luka can’t help feeling like she’s got her eyes on him the whole time. Either she’s coming to terms with the fact that he was telling the truth all along, or she’s… judging him. Or the flyer. And honestly, he can’t tell which is worse. “What’s wrong?” he asks once he notices she’s still staring. “Did I put it up at a funny angle or something?”

“No, just… thinking…” Her voice sounds distant, perhaps somewhere he might never find her. But then she snaps her fingers, and she says, “That’s it!”

“Uh.” Luka’s brow furrows. “What’s it?”

“Oh, just… sorry, my thoughts just ran away with me, I guess.” Marinette steps toward the flyer, brushing her fingers over it and wincing. maybe it’s just from the finish; his nails have scraped over then more than once, and it felt just as bad as a chalkboard. “I was just thinking, well… you’ve been good to my parents and all. Why don’t we help you with promotion? You know, put postcards in the boxes or bags. It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Luka nearly spotters, but the only thing he can manage to say is, “Where am I gonna get postcards?”

“I can make ‘em.” She says it like the simplest, most obvious thing in the world, and looks him up and down when he falters. “If… you and your band are okay with that, I mean. Cause I, y’know… dabble, in graphic design. But I don’t want to impose, if you’re okay with this. It’s your band and all.”

“I can,” he starts to say; then he stops himself, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “I can ask them?” _Idiot,_ he thinks. _That wasn’t supposed to be a question._ “I’ll let you know what they say. Have to come in bright and early tomorrow anyway, right?”

Marinette only smiles. It’s faint, almost absentminded, but that sweet little tug at the corner of her mouth is hardly lost on him. “You don’t have to.”

“Ask them?”’

“Come by.” Her bag is hanging on a peg by the register, and she’s off rummaging through it before Luka can ask what she means. He gravitates toward her more than he actually walks to her, and by the time he reaches the counter she’s fishing a card out of her wallet. It’s pink and black, decorated with the same spray of flowers and monogram as her apron. when he turns it over, there’s her name at the top, and below that, two email addresses. And two phone numbers.

He looks up, wide-eyed.

“So,” Marinette says. “Unless you’re coming all this way for a napoleon, a pear tart, and my pretty face, I think you’re good.”

“I—” Luka turns the business card over and over as though it will teach him now to speak again. “I guess so.” Does she know he thinks her face is pretty? Wait—of course she does, he gave her that note. Oh, Jesus, does she still have that thing? It’s been weeks. “Well,” he says, scuffing his heel against the tile. “Who knows. Maybe I’ll come anyway.”

Okay, that was _definitely_ not part of the script.

But then, neither is the way her eyes are sparkling. “Well,” she murmurs. “Maybe you will.”

“I should, uh—” He jerks a thumb toward the door. “Go, um. Happy closing?”

She laughs behind a hand, glancing between him and the tacked-up flyer before she grabs a broom and sends him off with a delicate wave. And to be honest, Luka’s never been angry with nature before, but he curses the wind for being so loud that he can’t hear that giggle in his head, over and over. Almost as much as he thanks it for drowning out all the stupid things he said, and the lingering questions of why she offered at all.

_Luka’s Word to the Wise, Part 2:_

_Progress isn’t linear but it sure as hell doesn’t mean you can’t stutter your way through getting a girl’s number and succeed._


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new year, new chapter c: it's been a while since i've worked on Chronicles—December Mood dips are Not Delicious, plus i started streaming regularly, which has been fun! but rest assured i intend to see it through to the end. i hope you've been well <3 take care, and enjoy!

**From: itsdjbubbles  
My dude, if your stage presence is anything like this flyer, y’all are absolutely gonna kill it at La Tortue. **

Well. Luka doesn’t know about that.

It’s not like Kitty Section is totally obscure. They’ve had a stage in Paris’s annual pop-up music festival or more than one occasion. And sometimes Juleka’s tagged along to street corners with him so they could duet in hopes of more than just pocket change. And, of course, there was that whole music contest with Bob Ross and XY, but that had only ended in fiasco: their music was stolen, Rose’s vocals ripped right off the track. Luka argued up and down over the phone until he was red in the face, nearly biked down to the studio and let them have it, but he could hardly prove it. And he cared too much about it jeopardizing Juleka’s happiness to follow through.

Total corporate bullshit. He didn’t know how Jagged Stone did it. When he said so at dinner the night he gave up, his Ma only tousled his hair and said, “You’re my boy, aren’t you?”

Sometimes he thinks that’s the strongest, bravest, he’s ever been. That all his audacity peaked years ago, and he’s only gotten worse since then.

Bubbles isn’t corporate bullshit. Luka feels like he’d be able to figure out something like that from conversation alone. But their talks have been friendly—and more than that, supportive. He’s even shown a few messages to the band, just to check that he wasn’t losing his mind. And he saw how their faces softened in approval, or lit up with excitement. Even Juleka’s.

Besides, Bubbles _makes_ music. And when he samples something, he actually credits it. He knows how to play the game. And it feels like they’re on the same side of the board.

Bubbles has that stage presence; the fact that he only needs that one shadowy picture on his profile is more than enough of an indicator. And Bubbles has a reputation that precedes him. So even if they’re on the same side of the board, it feels like Bubbles is always just a couple of steps ahead.

At least his bandmates are on the same side, and at the same step. All it took was a casual mention, during a late-night band practice, of “the bakery he keeps getting their snacks from” being all in on getting them even more exposure. They didn’t exactly do a good job of hiding their excitement, but he wouldn’t have wanted them to, anyway. Even Juleka, after practice ended, had to admit, “You did good.” And then, with perhaps a bit more snark, “Maybe _she’s_ the one trying to impress _you._ “

“Stop,” Luka said with a roll of his eyes, but he couldn’t help thinking about it once the partition between their beds was up. There was no way Marinette Dupain-Cheng was trying to impress him.

…Was there?

By now, nearly a day later, Luka’s still asking himself that. Still hemming and hawing like they have more than just two weeks to get their act together. Pacing below deck with his phone in his hand, thinking about pear tarts and pretty faces instead of going to see them in person, and staring at Marinette’s phone numbers until he thinks he’s accidentally memorized both of them.

He doesn’t recognize the pattern or the area code of one of them, so he can only assume that it's an American number. But he still hasn’t mucked up the courage to text or even save the French one in his phone. Why does he need to be scared in the first place? It’s a phone number, and this is strictly business, and everything between them has been strictly business.

Well. _Nearly_ everything. Nearly strictly.

He thinks.

Okay. Okay. All he has to do is say… what? _Hi?_ Who just starts texting someone for the first time with “Hi?” But he can’t go writing a whole essay either, even though at least now he has the power to edit his words instead of just saying them and hoping for the best.

This is harder than it needs to be. And yeah, maybe he’s just making it harder than it needs to be, but it’s not like his brain and the shake in his hands are giving him much of a choice in the matter.

Luka switches back over to his message thread with Bubbles and shoots off a quick reply— **flatterer** —because maybe answering something easy will make the hard stuff more tolerable. He finds himself looking toward his guitar as though it might lend him strength… well, what the hell. It couldn’t hurt. He plays a doodle or two, idle notes, and catches himself before his fingers can drift toward the beginning of the ocean-blue song. At this point, it’s neither perfect nor good, and he can’t tell if it’s personal dissatisfaction or the numbers that the latest draft has been doing online.

Both. It’s probably both.

Messaging Marinette ends up being just as hard after his attempts at centering as it was before—because as it turns out, the whole music-giving-him-unbridled-confidence thing really only works _while_ he’s playing it. So now he’s left still staring at the blank NEW MESSAGE screen, the cursor blinking almost tauntingly at him because of course it is. Because somehow, he can write a note telling a girl her eyes are pretty and survive long enough to see her smile about it, but he can’t send that same girl a text. It’s not like he can even see her reaction this time, anyway; that just gives him even more of an advantage.

Okay. Okay. He can actually do this. Maybe. He thinks—no, _no,_ he has to.

With a deep breath that he holds longer than he releases, Luka opens a new message.

**To: Marinette  
** **hey. it’s luka.**

And like an idiot, he hits SEND before he’s even put the rest of his message together. So now he has to make a mad dash to come up with _something_ so he doesn’t seem like a total creep for messaging her out of the blue.

For fuck’s sake. This is exactly why he writes his messages in the notes first.

**To: Marinette  
** **sorry, hit send before i could finish. anyway, just wanted to tell you the band is cool with the postcard idea. i can pay you next time i come to the bakery, if that’s cool.**

**To: Marinette**  
**anyway, it’s really cool of you to offer your help like this. sorry if i didn’t say so yesterday, it’s kind of been... a wild time.**

Luka locks his phone before he can agonize too much over what he’s sent, stuffs it away and starts pacing again. It’s not a frantic, shaky thing; no, he’s learned to keep the shakes on the inside until no one’s around to see them. He jumps when his back pocket vibrates, and he nearly drops his phone trying to fish it out. It’s only Bubbles, and he can’t tell whether he’s relieved or disappointed until his phone buzzes again. Twice. And this time, it actually _is_ from Marinette.

**From: itsdjbubbles  
** **Sorry, I was getting some stuff ready for my next project. Listen, I’m just saying. Don’t sell yourself short as this stuff. Paris is gonna hear you up there, and it’s gonna lose its collective fucking mind.**

**From: Marinette  
** **hi luka ☺️ no worries, i do that too sometimes. here’s the mockup for the postcard. let me know what your band thinks, i’ll do some tweaks and send it to print. sound good?**

Luka balks, both at the tone of the message and at the picture she sent. It looks almost exactly like the flyer, same color scheme and everything. The only difference seems to be in the composition, which makes sense; she’s got more of the eye for this stuff, even for someone who only “dabbles.”

**To: Marinette  
** **wow, this is... thank you? that was fast. and this is really well put-together. i think they’re gonna love it.**

**you really weren’t kidding, huh.**

Luka finds himself sinking onto his bed and staring at the message thread instead of actually doing something productive. And strangely, he’s fine with that. The more time passes, the less scary it is to see her typing back, again and again and again.

**From: Marinette  
** **course i wasn’t kidding. “help” is practically my middle name to the people who matter.**

**and i mean, there’s only a little bit of time until your show, right? so, gotta get movin.**

**anyway, i gotta run. my friend needs help for his summer class and i promised i’d go visit today.**

**Keep me posted about your band!**

**♥️**

There is far too much in that message for Luka to need to process. “People who matter?” “Keep me posted?” _The literal heart emoji at the end?_ He reads their messages over and over, mostly to confirm that this really, actually just happened, but he’s not going to push his luck. Maybe she just talks to everyone like that, and more importantly, the two of them haven’t been much more than a series of transactions anyway.

A... _lot_ of transactions.

That she’s been doing a lot of giving for.

Luka tries and at least sort of succeeds at shaking the thought from his mind; he can’t read hers, and he shouldn’t try to. He sends her one last text— **cool, have a good one** —and switches back to Bubbles before he can worry if his words were too casual.

**To: itsdjbubbles  
** **Thanks for the vote of confidence. I guess you’re not the only one? the bakery I go to, they’re offering to help too.**

**or, I mean, CBG is offering to help.**

Bubbles’s reply doesn’t come until a few hours later. It’s presumably after that project work he mentioned, and definitely after Luka’s had some time to play out the rest of the shakes before he goes busking. His phone buzzes with the notification just as he’s about to leave, and what Bubbles has to say makes his stomach churn and his blood run both hot and cold.

**From: itsdjbubbles  
** **wait. wait wait wait. hold on i just scrolled your posts.**

**CBG is *Marinette Dupain-Cheng?***

**ohhhhhhh my dude you are in for it now.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh gosh, i'm so sorry for the late update!! i promise i'm still working on this, little by little. i am on vacation next week, so maybe i'll get the chance to really put some work in.
> 
> in any case, enjoy today's update c:

_okay, so who the hell was gonna tell me that CBG’s designed a whole-ass album cover for my favorite artist of all time?_

_scratch that. who was gonna tell me she designed my FAVORITE album cover for my FAVORITE artist of all time?_

Bubbles, as it turns out, has known Marinette Dupain-Cheng since he was four years old. Went to school with her and everything. So that’s another scoop to the shit Luka’s landed himself in. He still isn’t sure what gave him greater whiplash: finding out about that connection, or finding her name in the fine print of Jagged stone’s album credits. He also isn’t sure whether it’s a good thing that Nino mentions little else, and especially dodges the question of if it’s even cool to actually admit to having a gigantic crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng, or whether he’s just wasting his time.

Cool.

Cool, cool, cool.

(Luka is most definitely not cool.)

Especially for those freeze-frames of time that he wonders, to his own horror, if Bubbles has been Adrien Agreste all this time.

It takes him the better part of an hour of pacing and fidgeting with his guitar pick to realize that no, he hasn’t been casually messaging a fashion mogul’s son who also just so happened to be Marinette’s own gigantic crush. He doesn’t seem like the type to use “dude” in everyday conversation, and for another thing, it didn't exactly like up with what Marinette had said about them knowing each other in middle school.

One day, Luka swears, he’s going to take this anxiety thing out back and have it meet its maker.

Even if, maybe, he sort of _is_ its maker.

(Okay, maybe he's going to take his _brain_ out back, because he's definitely not responsible for _that_.)

But he figures, once that initial panic and urge to scream into his pillow wear off, that it might be a cool talking point between him and Marinette. One that, for once, doesn’t have much to do with either of their jobs. Or with how tongue-tied he gets around her because she just won’t stop being so _pretty_. Not that that’s a problem; both his sister and his mother would have his head for ever thinking that way, and even then, Rose would tell them to get in line. Something about how they didn’t raise him this way, even if two of them didn’t even raise him at all.

Luka waits a couple of days before stopping by the bakery again; it gives them both some breathing room and the time for those postcards to be finished and printed. He thinks about it a lot. The postcards. The effort. Marinette, too, but in his quietly flustered opinion, he thinks that’s a given. He doesn’t get the chance to come until close to closing time again because of his delivery shift; he just hopes they don’t mind too much. He braces himself the whole ride over for whatever may be coming: another friendly crack about napoleons and pear tarts, the beauty of the postcards, maybe even another offer of kindness if Marinette’s pattern is anything to go by.

The one thing Luka doesn’t brace himself for—which, of course, is the one thing that ends up happening—is the door propped open, and the music drifting out through the crack. And he can’t even revel in the fact that it’s one of his favorite songs playing, because…

Because Marinette is dancing. Rag in one hand, spray bottle in the other. No, it’s not like, a flawlessly choreographed routine or anything. It’s more like a mix of what Rose does during their down time when she has too much energy and nowhere to put it, and what Juleka does when she’s trying to find the rhythm of a new song. It’s blissfully unaware, and beautiful, and it feels like home, and Luka can’t stop staring.

He doesn’t mean to. He knows he shouldn’t. It’s just… he can’t remember ever seeing a moment when she was simply “Marinette, “instead of “Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Friend to Practically Everybody.” or “Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Daughter of the Owners of The Best Bakery In Paris.” or even “Marinette, the Girl Behind the Counter with the Sketchbook Full of Secrets and the connections to Jagged Fucking Stone.”

Okay, maybe he’s been watching a couple too many fantasy movies lately.

And he definitely needs to look away, like, right _now,_ because she does this thing with her hips that makes his brain forget how to function for a second, and he needs his brain to function in every sense of the phrase, and God fucking damn it, Marinette Dupain-Cheng is _hot_ and he’s not supposed to think that she’s _hot_ —

And she’s looking at him. Frozen. right as he’s about to get off his bike and knock.

And, like the total idiot he can only manage to be at the worst possible times, he trips. Over his bike. And faceplants, right in front of Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

He’s somewhere between waiting for death to take him, and thanking his Ma for always getting on him about wearing a helmet, and wondering if he really was so stupid that his first instinct was to _run_ , when the bell over the bakery door rings like mad. Someone cries out his name, and the music cuts, and there’s a skitter of footsteps on concrete. When he comes to himself and starts to sit up, he finds himself face-to-face with Marinette, who's kneeling beside him and already scanning him for any injuries.

The first thing she says, with her hand in her hair, is, “Oh, God. She’s gonna kill me.”

The first thing he says, with a wince, is, “Yikes.”

It’s then that the pain sinks in, dull and searing and throbbing all at once, as if punishing him for choosing to say _that,_ of all things. He sits up a bit more, pain chasing up his spine and stinging his palms; his knee is badly scraped and starting to swell, he realizes once he gets a good look at the rest of him. He can’t tell yet, whether Juleka would call this karma or kismet. All he can think is that at least his jeans were already ripped.

“Can…” Marinette swallows hard, but otherwise she’s entirely unfazed. “Can you stand? Put weight on it? Oh God, oh my God, she’s actually gonna kill me.”

“I…” Cautiously, Luka tries to get to his feet, and Marinette makes space for him. All it takes is one step for a jolt of pain to shoot up his leg, and he staggers and clutches the closest streetlamp, nearly tripping over his bike again in the process. “Shit,” is all he can bite out after drawing his breath in through his teeth and holding onto it for too long. He lets it out, little by little, and his grip on the lamppost loosens. “It’s okay, I’m—I can just walk my bike to the metro station, and—”

It’s like she isn’t even listening to him; she’s looking around the bike, evidently searching for something. Finally, she finds it—his bike lock—and after it and the bakery door are secure, she coaxes his arm around her shoulder. It’s almost comical, because he’s got a good thirty centimeters on her, but it hurts too much to laugh. Or, apparently, to stammer in protest when she leads him through the side door and up the stairs to her apartment.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. Seeing her in her pajamas was enough of an invasion of her privacy. But seeing the inside of her literal, actual _home_? Oh, no. No way.

“You’re hurt,” she says simply, as if she’s read his mind; her voice is trembling, the way voices do when they know they shouldn’t. “It’d be against like, everything I am as a person if I just let you leave.” She only lets go of him to unlock the door, and only then does it occur to him that, for a few moments that should have been blissful, they were side-by-side, and in some places skin-to-skin.

Mr. Dupain gives them a funny, almost unreadable look when Marinette opens the door. One look at Luka’s leg seems to answer any questions he might have had, and effortlessly he helps Luka to the couch while Marinette disappears into the bathroom. “You know,” he jokes under his breath, “When I imagined someone falling for my daughter, I didn’t mean _literally._ ”

Luka’s face goes hot. “I didn’t—I’m not—”

Whatever he wants to say falls on deaf ears, and Mr. Dupain makes himself scarce as soon as Marinette emerges from the bathroom. Even as she lifts his leg onto the coffee table, Luka swears he can feel those kind, quietly insistent eyes burning holes into him all the way from the kitchen. He doesn’t get to think much more about what Mr. Dupain might have meant, or what he would have said to refute it, because Marinette is pressing an alcohol pad to the scrapes, and it stings like a motherfucker—which is probably a good thing for more reasons than one.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says weakly, because somewhere along the way, _I don’t deserve it_ got stuck in his throat and refused to come out.

Marinette gives him a look. He can’t quite figure out what it means. “Yeah. I do.”

“Nah.” He readjusts, braces himself for the second sting of the ointment and the bandages. “I kinda deserved it. Jules would call it karma, I guess.”

There she goes again, wincing at the mere mention of Juleka. Or maybe… maybe it’s something else. Without a word, she gets up and disappears into the kitchen, and he spends her whole absence wondering what he said or did. He’s only relieved when she returns with a bag of frozen corn and a shrug as if to say, _It’s all we had._ She presses the bag to his knee, breathing deep in time with him, or maybe in hopes that his breathing will start to match hers. Then she speaks, and her voice wavers.

“Why would you ever think,” she murmurs, “that you deserve any pain?”

Luka opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens and shuts again. This time, at least for a while, the words don’t even make it to his throat. Eventually, all he can spit out is, “I was. Watching. You.”

“I know,” Marinette says, turning as pink as her shorts. “I saw.”

That’s the one thing he can appreciate: she doesn’t try to downplay it or say it was dumb. Even now, she’s unapologetic, and direct, and God, maybe he’s just fallen a little more. “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “I was gonna knock, I was…” He shifts again, his knee still in her gentle grasp, and flinches. “I just… wanted to see your postcards.”

_I just wanted to see you._

“Marinette.” His lips tingle just from saying her name, and his stomach is churning. “Who… who’s gonna kill you?”

This time, Marinette goes scarlet; it would look about as pretty as literally every other color and pattern she wears if she didn’t seem so… mortified. “I’ll go get one of—the postcards,” she says—stammers, more like—and as she’s heading upstairs she calls out, “Papa, he can’t walk. Can we drive him home?”

From the kitchen, Mr. Dupain winks.

_1 Photo Attached_

_RIP lol_

_and no, i’m not talking about my jeans. those were already like that._

_but also. 😬 oh boy._

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Twitter](www.twitter.com/omnistruck) and a [Tumblr](http://voltisubito.tumblr.com); follow me there for more shenanigans! Feel free to leave comments and questions and stuff in my [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/omnistruck) as well c: and kudos here, too!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!!! I hope you're having a lovely day <3


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